Wikipedia:WikiProject Terrorism/Guantanamo/What to do with Afghan training camps?

What to do with Afghan training camps? edit

The wikipedia currently has articles on about two dozen Afghan training camps. I now think some of these article should be amalgamated.

I started most of these articles. At the time I started them I was going through the transcripts of the captives' Tribunal sessions, and creating articles about each camp, as I came across them. At the time I started them I honestly thought sufficient sources for all of them would come to light. Sources have emerged for some of them.

I found a source that quoted Indian intelligence officials who estimated that there had been over one hundred training camps in Afghanistan, and in the FATA -- ie camps run by outside groups that the Taliban allowed to operate, or were run by groups rebelling against the Taliban, or run by tribal militias in the FATA.

Privately, not for article space -- I suspect that many of the camps the OARDEC documents list as separate camps, were duplicates -- camps which were known by several different names. There are various indications that the Urban Warfare camp, the Kandahar airfield camp, and Tarnak Farms are all the same camp. Those indications don't rise to the level of WP:RS, so no speculation belongs in article space. I am noting this here because I am going to keep my eyes peeled for WP:RS. If anyone else comes across WP:RS that can confirm which camps had multiple names I'd appreciate a heads-up.

I think the camps for which the only sources are OARDEC allegation memos, and those allegation memos merely say a few captives attended the camp, but don't provide any other details, should be amalgamated. Geo Swan (talk) 18:12, 29 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The West Point Study has two lists of camps. The most important list includes 11 camps.

Joseph Felter, Jarret Brachman (2007-07-25). "CTC Report: An Assessment of 516 Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) Unclassified Summaries". Combating Terrorism Center. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2009-08-30.

Update -- Since I drafted this proposal another contributor has nominated most of the articles on training camps for deletion, one by one. I do not think the individual nominations were collegial, or otherwise consistent with wikipolicy. Some closed as redirects, others closed as deletes. I am considering initiating a DRV for all of them, so that their histories can be restored, to facilitate merging with a broader article. Geo Swan (talk) 11:13, 14 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

After the last closure of Al Fand training camp I placed a {{mergeto}} Afghan training camp on it. I drafted the following, to place there. But I decided to try to transclude the material both here and there.

Wikipedia:WikiProject Terrorism/Guantanamo/What to do with Afghan training camps?/Merge less well referenced articles to Afghan training camp... or to a new article...

Merge less well referenced articles to Afghan training camp... or to a new article... edit

The Felter study listed 38 camps by name. The Felter study does not list all the camps named in OARDEC allegation memos. It doesn't even list all the camps named in the CSRT allegation memos, just the first 516 memos to be published. So far 572 CSRT allegation memos have been published. In addition the allegation memos published from the annual Administrative Review Board hearings were more detailed. Over one thousand ARB memos have been published, some of which list previously unnamed camps.

An alternate target for the merge could be named something like: Training facilities allegedly attended by Guantanamo captives.

Not all the camps were in Afghanistan. Some seemed to be in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The FATA are Pashtun territory, so it is not that much of a stretch to list them in the article on Afghan training camps. But other camps were near disputed Kashmir, near the Indian border. Still other camps were alleged to be Chechnya, Bosnia, the Phillipines and Indonesia.
Not all of the camps were fly-by-night jihadist camps. A few of the captives had, listed as allegations that justified their continued detention, attendance at training camps back in their home countries, in their youths, when they were undergoing compulsory military service. One guy had listed what sounded not like a military training camp, but a mundane summer camp, for kids, that included a rifle range.
Some camps seem to have been official Taliban camps, not camps run by al Qaeda, or the Hezbi Islami Gulbuddin, or the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. And I wonder whether there are grounds to treat the official Taliban camps differently. Geo Swan (talk) 13:22, 14 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Joseph Felter, Jarret Brachman (2007-07-25). "CTC Report: An Assessment of 516 Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) Unclassified Summaries". Combating Terrorism Center. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2009-08-30.

It has always been my position that the OARDEC allegation memos are themselves secondary sources, because the authors of those memos were charged with the responsibility to go through the reports from half a dozen or more other agencies.

It was their responsibility to detect duplicative material, and strip them out.
It was their responsibility to detect contradictions, and reconcile them, or assess which version was the most credible, or, at least, make clear there were contradictions.
it was their responsibility to assess whether material in the reports they reviewed was no longer credible, and had been superceded by newer information.

I believe that by all reasonable definitions of the distinction between a primary source, and a secondary source, the responsibilities on the authors of the OARDEC memos clearly make them secondary sources. So camps that are named in an OARDEC memo, but aren't named in a press report, or a scholarly article, like the Felter articles, are, nevertheless, named in an WP:RS.

Therefore I think it would be appropriate to list all the alleged training facilities listed in the OARDEC memos, without regard to whether they were also listed in the Felter memo, or any other non-OARDEC source. If there is no WP:RS that describes them as an "al Qaeda camp", we should not describe the camp as an al Qaeda camp. Similarly we need to be careful not to list them as a "militant" camp, or a "military" camp, or a "terrorist" camp, if the WP:RS don't say that. However, I believe it is not original research to characterize these as camps allegedly attended by Guantanamo captives, because that is exactly what the WP:RS say. I do not believe it would be original research to say that alleged attendance at one of these camps was offered as a justification, in part, for continued detention in Guantanamo. Geo Swan (talk) 13:22, 14 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As I think I suggested considerably earlier, I agree that a merged article on them all would be best. I think a request for undeletion to permit the merge would probably be the best course. I like his new suggestion for Training facilities allegedly attended by Guantanamo captives. as a title--there were various suggestions in some of the AfDs that the inclusion of "Afghan" in the title was in some way undue weight or POV; I still do not see this, but it answers the objections. and is better than any title I was able to devise. I remain confident that over the course of the next 10 years or so there will be adequate academic and non academic sources in various languages for individual articles, but this does not appear to be the case yet. DGG ( talk ) 19:50, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]