Bhokara

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Talk:Afghan National Army

Kindly request to stop using wikipedia for political campaigns. If you're here to build an encyclopedia, support your claims with reliable sources. If you're here to propagate libels, we'll have to block you account from editing. Materialscientist (talk) 09:30, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Your recent editing history at Afghan National Army shows that you are in danger of breaking the three-revert rule, or that you may have already broken it. An editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Breaking the three-revert rule often leads to a block.

If you wish to avoid being blocked, instead of reverting, please use the article's talk page to discuss the changes; work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection. You may still be blocked for edit warring even if you do not exceed the technical limit of the three-revert rule if your behavior indicates that you intend to continue to revert repeatedly.

Sigh. There will be no further warning. Materialscientist (talk) 09:35, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm curious -- why does the "three revert" rule apply only to civilian academics, and not to the U.S. Army, which has reverted back to the approved article text of General Caldwell FOUR TIMES TODAY ALONE?

I'm also curious why you're warning ME, the aggrieved party in this matter, who is trying to uphold the principles of Wikipedia as an unbiased community-based information osurce, and not the U.S. Army, which has obviously hijacked this Wiki entry and is not allowing any changes to it?

You posted on the Talk page that, and I quote you, "disputed is fine." Apparently either it's NOT fine, or you weren't telling me the truth, because you're not permitting any language other than the official U.S. Army version of this article.

You also posted to me that if someone was deliberately eliminating language which disputed the official U.S. Army Wikipedia entry for this topic, it would be dealt with. Apparently, you meant "it will be dealt with by censoring anyone except the U.S. Army from editing this page."

The U.S. Army's "sources" for it's approved Wikipedia entry, alterations to which cannot be made without General Caldwell's permission, are U.S. Army press releases used to support previous U.S. Army press releases. I would submit, given the Pentagon's track record of honesty in publishing information (Pentagon Papers), that a tenured Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School and a retired State Department Diplomat and academic are at least as credible a source as Army press releases about its own success. Bhokara (talk) 14:14, 4 January 2012 (UTC) Bhokara

P.S. The Talk Page has been used an naseum today to attempt to reach agreement on language not provided solely by the U.S. Army. The U.S. Army has shown it is totally unwilling to compromise on this language. On the Talk page, you yourself said that using a phrase which incuded language to the effect that the size of the army is "disputed" was acceptable, yet each time this language you approved was used, it was reverted to the sole-source, U.S. Army approved version. Bhokara (talk) 14:18, 4 January 2012 (UTC) Bhokara

Hello

Hi Bhokara, I noticed that you've been having some problems over at Talk:Afghan National Army and wondered if I might be able to help and or explain things. First, if as you claim "A U.S. Army officer at General Caldwell's headquarters in Kabul has been assigned to maintain this page" you need to provide some evidence to back this up - if you search through the article history it will be there. Second, while you think that our current figure for the size of the ANA is incorrect, you need to provide recent evidence from a 'reliable source' to show what it really is - clearly a source from 2009 is more likely to be incorrect now, than an article written two weeks ago. Because of the way we work, some things may not be true but instead only 'verifiable' - i.e. written in a newspaper. Until something better is available then we have to go on this. If a newspaper decided that their source for a figure is reliable and printed it, then generally speaking, we can rely on the figure being correct. Does this make things clearer? SmartSE (talk) 14:48, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh and if Wikipedia was really controlled by the US Army, do you think we would have these videos?! SmartSE (talk) 14:51, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Ok, gimme a minute and I'll see what I can find to add to the article. SmartSE (talk) 15:13, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Here's the problem with the Afghan National Army page: You are accepting U.S. Army press releases and statements as "sources" to back up previous U.S. Army press releases. The entire article is self-sourced to the U.S. Army basically. SOMEONE is deleting any effort at editing this page, and the panguage is maintained exactly as approved by General Caldwell. I didn't say Wikipedia was controlled by the U.S. Army, I said the ANA page is controlled by the U.S. Army, which any rational observer can see for themselves. The 2009 article provides a mathematical formula for calculating the size of the ANA, developed by the Naval Postgraduate School by academics, with help from the State Department. This formula can be applied to U.S. Army statements using 100% U.S. Army provided statistics to prove conclusively that the ANA cannot possibly have as many men under arms as it claims. All that is being requested is that the dispute between the U.S. Army and senior, tenured academics, scholars and analysts be acknowledged. I THOUGHT this was the spirit of Wikipedia.

Look, I'm Chris Mason. I'm a retired State Department foreign service officer who has worked on the ANA for ten years, five of it inside the State Department, as the Afghanistan Desk Officer for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, and half as an academic and Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Defence Studies in Washington, DC. I have published extensively on the Afghanistan and the ANA in the Atlantic, Foreign Policy, Harvard's Balfour Press, and a dozen other peer-reviewed journals and magazines. I'm not a crank, and I know what I'm talking about here. Bhokara (talk) 15:20, 4 January 2012 (UTC) Bhokara

Ok. Sorry if I implied you were a crank and likewise that you've encountered difficulties. The material you were adding was being removed by Materialscientist, who I'd be willing to bet isn't working for the US army and was making the edits in good faith - as were you. I've changed the article using the G+M source you posted on the talk page to show that the real number of soldiers in the ANA is unknown. I've checked the 2009 article as well, but to use an equation would be what we call 'original research' which we can't do. While the article says that the size will never go above 100k it doesn't really explain why that is the case (unlike the G+M article) so I think it is better to use that at the moment. Being an expert in the field yourself, might you know of any other sources out there that discuss the problem RE officers + ghost soldiers? If they don't exist, then I'm afraid we can't include it, because even though I don't doubt your knowledge, we need a verifiable printed source to back it up. SmartSE (talk) 15:58, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

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The 2009 article states that 100,000 is the level at which new recruits = annual losses. It's pretty simple. No matter how many recruits they get, the larger the size, the more men lost to attrition (desertion) and non-reenlistment each year. I'm not Einstein, but I'm sure there's a mathematical term for this kind of constant algorythm. It also states that this was originally determined by the U.S. Army itself, at the Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The problem is that the U.S. Army has won this fight -- the number on the article page is still the wholly imaginary number of 180,000, and the article reflects no academic dissent from this number. I want the main article to indicate that the true size is "disputed." I know at least a half a dozen senior academics and U.S. government analysts that dispute General Caldwell's number of 180,000. I don't want it say that General Caldwell is a brazen liar, which he is, but rather that "The current size of the ANA is disputed. The number has been placed between 100,000 and 180,000 men."

Bhokara (talk) 16:50, 4 January 2012 (UTC) Bhokara

I agree that that is a sensible thing for the article to say. We should probably move back to the article talk page though to get a proper consensus from other editors. Meanwhile Someone editing from Islamabad (or at least with an internet connection routed through there) thinks that you should be blocked indefinitely. I'm starting to see your earlier point! SmartSE (talk) 17:01, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Ok, please make sure to only sign in as Bhokara from now on to avoid any difficulties. Like it or not, we'll have to try and establish a consensus to include the fact that the figures are disputed on the talk page if other people continue to remove it. I'm keeping an eye on the article from now on though. SmartSE (talk) 17:22, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

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if there's some administrator way to delete the Khiva identity, please do, I forgot the password.

Not really, but it doesn't matter. You can disclose it on your user page if you really want to.

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how do we establish a consensus? Can you start this process somehow?

We've already started! We discuss it, maybe go round in circles for a while and reach a decision. If we can't decide, then we try and find more uninvolved editors and ask them to take a look. I can't stress the importance though of having really good sources to show that the number is disputed. SmartSE (talk) 17:57, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh and is this any use as a source? It mentions ghost soldiers, but I can't get full access to it at the moment for some reason. SmartSE (talk) 17:24, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

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I think I can access it through Aladdin at my univeristy library (GWU). Let me see what I can do. Bhokara (talk) 17:40, 4 January 2012 (UTC) Bhokara

Great! SmartSE (talk) 17:57, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

` I had to order it through interlibrary loan. For some reason, Aladin takes you to the Taylor & Francis webpage to buy the aritlce for $36.00. The gist of it is that ever since there was an Afghan Army, the sinecure of the officer corps has been to over-report the number of men on hand, collect the rations of the ghost soldiers (rice, cooking oil, etc) and sell them on the local market. I was totally shocked when Globe and Mail journalist Graeme Smith learned from the senior Canadian general at NMTC-A that NATO IS NOT ACTUALLY COUNTING THE PERSONNEL -- it is taking the numbers provided by ANA officers!!! Talk about the wolf guarding the chicken coop! Bhokara (talk) 18:17, 4 January 2012 (UTC) Bhokara

Ok, but as I've already said, what you've heard is of no use here unless you can find sources to back it up. SmartSE (talk) 18:31, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

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I got a colleague to loadload it for me. I now have the Mark Sedra article in PDF format -- how do I get it to you? Bhokara (talk) 18:21, 4 January 2012 (UTC)Bhokara

My email is smartsewiki [at] gmail.com SmartSE (talk) 18:31, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

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“However, the ministry [of defense] and AMF {Afghan Military Forces] commanders had an interest in overstating the number of troops under their command, as they could claim more resources from the central government to feed, house and remunerate them... a large proportion of the AMF personnel on the payroll of the Defence Ministry were in fact ‘ghost soldiers’.” Mark Sedra. “Afghanistan and the Folly of Apolitical Demilitarisation.” Journal “Conflict, Security & Development ,” Volume 11, Issue 4. London: Taylor & Francis, 2011. Page 9.

Bhokara (talk) 19:16, 4 January 2012 (UTC) Bhokara

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Foreign Policy Magazine: "Transition to Nowhere: The Limits of "Afghanization" By Professor Thomas Johnson and Matthew DuPee, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey California, March 22, 2011

http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/03/22/transition_to_nowhere_the_limits_of_afghanization

How many scholars do you need? That's three so far. Bhokara (talk) 19:16, 4 January 2012 (UTC)Bhokara

Hi again, I've had a look at what you sent me, but it is going to need some work before it can be incorporated into the article. I'll be able to do it over the weekend. You want {{npov}} to mark the article, but you need to explain on the talk page precisely what is wrong and be able to back it up with sources, rather than your personal knowledge. Of course, if anything in the article is poorly referenced or unsourced, then feel free to rewrite or remove it. Make sure you explain your reasoning on the talk page or in the edit summary though, or it might get undone. Cheers SmartSE (talk) 11:10, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Editor review/Bhokara

Hi there Bhokara, I've removed your request for an editor review because it focused on a content dispute at the ANA article. ER is a place for reviewing the editors themselves, and not any disputes. I will look at the situation though. Thanks, NLinpublic (talk) 19:45, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

January 2012

Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to violate Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy by adding commentary and your personal analysis into articles, as you did at Afghan National Army, you may be blocked from editing. Please stop adding controversial, politically motivated content. If you add anything else to the artilce please make sure it is supported by a reliable source and is written from a neutral point of view. Pol430 talk to me 16:47, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Please do not attack other editors, as you did at User talk:Pol430. Comment on content, not on contributors. Personal attacks damage the community and deter users. Please stay cool and keep this in mind while editing. Thank you. Drmies (talk) 22:51, 24 January 2012 (UTC)