Talk:Afghan National Army

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This page has been cited as a source by a media organization. The citation is in: "New Afghan army hit by 3,000 deserters", Daily Telegraph online, January 12, 2004. (details)

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Contents 1 Third Corp 2 too many pictures 3 SVG? 4 Text copied from http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/afghanistan/army.htm 5 1880? 6 Which pictures should be used? 7 How about this for a training picture? 8 Gallery 9 Ethnic composition of the ANA

[edit] Third Corp

Geoff, out of interest do you know that the third Corp is definately planned and not yet operational? I know that plans for the ANA in 2002 called for Corps in the North, Centre (209) and South (205) respectively and I haven't seen any reference to a third Corps being operational, but given the poor quality of media coming out of Afghanistan, I'm not sure.

I'm not privvy to any special information, but the wording as it was struck me as unnecessarily vague. I would posit that the lack of information about a third corps is reasonably good evidence that it is not yet operational. Given that the total force strength is only 30,000, if there is a third corps it would be largely notional and not fully manned. I agree that it's very possible that it exists and the media reporting has simply been insufficient, but I'd prefer to err on the side of giving out-of-date information rather than misleading information. Geoff NoNick 15:38, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I'll have a look around and see what I can find about it. --RaiderAspect 02:59, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Good work! Geoff NoNick 17:40, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

All Five Corps (201, 203, 205, 207 and 209) are somewhat operational with the 209th being the smallest as it only is currently fielding on a single Brigade. While I'm over here I'll probably start expanding on the Afghan and ANA Articles. --Sandman02 18:00, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] too many pictures

i am going to remove a few of these pictures. there are simply too many. Kingturtle 13:42, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] SVG?

I made a SVG of the emblem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Afghan_National_Army_emblem.svg I'm not shure if it's needed but compared to the raster version it looks cleaner in my opinion. Jrabbit05 02:23, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Text copied from http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/afghanistan/army.htm

Much of the History section seems to be directly copied from http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/afghanistan/army.htm - is this a copyright vio? I got rid of some of the text, and replaced it with a data table, with specific data points sourced from that page. -- SilverStar_talk 06:48, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 1880?

The article says the army existed since 1800s. How is that possible given all the regime changes in the past century? --Voidvector 18:06, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Which pictures should be used?

According to User:PH4crew's personal views no picture that includes someone who may be non-Afghan should be used here, neither should pictures of Afghan National Army soldiers involved in the War in Afghanistan (2001–present), or something like that, he's not very consistent. Which policy should we have? We need to discuss this, what is this article about? Can we use pictures of ANA troops together with Western troops? I think we should, ANA is being helped and trained by Western forces and there's no reason to hide that fact. Please provide your opinions. Manxruler 15:51, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I think the intro to this article says a lot of what should be included, also when it comes to images:

“

Afghan National Army (ANA) is the army of Afghanistan that is being trained by the coalition forces to ultimately take the lead in land-based military operations. Since 2002, multi-billion US dollars worth military equipment, facilities, and other form of aid was provided to the Military of Afghanistan.

”

Manxruler 16:07, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I can't claim to be particularly current on the subject having been unable to find User:PH4crew's opinions, but I'm inclined to agree that photos should not be ruled out solely because they also contain soldiers from other armies. Taking the question from a different angle, I'd suggest that the photos should focus on people and operations, rather than equipment (lines of tanks and humvees, i.e.). Even though the only photo of Afghan operations currently in the article also shows an American soldier, I would use it all the same. I can think of no reason to disguise the fact that the ANA operates in cooperation with other militaries. Geoff NoNick 06:38, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Afghan National Army existed since at least 1880s, not since 2001. Perhaps it existed since 1747 when the nation was created. You view ANA as if it started for the first time in history in 2001. I am aware that the new ANA army is being trained by US-NATO soldiers, you may write a specific section mentioning this with photos of both ANA and US-NATO troops. Do you not remember that during the 1970s and 80s the Afghan army was trained and equipped by Soviet Union? To add photos of Afghan and western troops everywhere in the article makes the article looks silly. Besides, there are too many photos already, the longer the article gets the more photos to be added.--PH4crew 14:20, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Most of the photos in the article are placed in a gallery, so they don't clutter at all. And you did remove several pictures with ONLY Afghan soldiers in them, strangely enough. The article isn't about the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan army, then it would have specified at such. Past armies belong to a History section in the article, this is an article about the current Afghan National Army. Other articles about currently active armies focus on the army as it is today, and so should this. Manxruler 18:22, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and I don't think that images of anonymous-looking barracks are the most useful for this article. Far away from the quality of the removed images. Manxruler 18:29, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I totally agree with you on most of the things you pointed-out, but always remember that we are in the process of constructing this article. The article needs to be gradually expanded, and the barrack images are just there to attract someone to edit a section about the construction projects involved with creating this new army. The fighting or action images look better in a section that is about battles or actions. I think the photo gallery should display all the different things sbout ANA, i.e. soldiers, uniforms, equipments, barracks, etc. There are also a variety of images in the external links section in Wikimedia:Commons. I like images in articles that are sharp, clean and tells a story, and as time passes by we will come across better ones.--PH4crew 02:24, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, I don't think two barrack pictures are necessary, people will write things wothout images inspiring them to do so. One picture is more than enough, if there has to be any. When it comes to soldiers and uniforms you removed a very close-up image of two ANA soldiers and a picture of ANA troops on BMP. The last image also showed what kind of climate conditions the army is up against on a regular basis. Manxruler 08:39, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Again, this article covers the entire army network of Afghanistan, a nation with 30 million people, which is more than the population of the entire continent of Australia or is 10% of the population of the United States. The article is not about the current war situation in Afghanistan, also, the building of the ANA is not related to the current war in that country but part of larger plan to rebuild the nation as a whole, under the orders from the United Nations, which Afghanistan has been part of since the 1940's when it first began. The images you are trying to add do not go with this article, people in army uniform posing for camera is not suppose to be in an article when there are images that shows army soldiers without looking at the camera. Out of all the images you picked the one with people posing and staring at the camera? Avoid doing that in the future, some people would not want their face being shown online to people.--PH4crew 10:18, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

I didn't download the image. Its no business of mine to make considerations like that. Wikipedia is full of such images and there are several like that left right now. Decisions on which pictures should be used on Wikipedia (considerations of whether people might not want their picture on-line etc.) belongs to a bigger, more principal discussion than this. Please calm down, making order-like statements leads nowhere Manxruler 11:28, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

And I didn't particularly search out that image, it was added a while ago and you removed it. Manxruler 11:30, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] How about this for a training picture?

Here's a nice picture. Manxruler 01:21, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Never mind. There are enough images here as it is. Manxruler 02:48, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Gallery

There are plenty of images spread throughout the article, making the gallery somewhat redundant. If people want to see more pics, that's what the Commons category link is for. I removed 5 that are already there and will remove the remaining 3 after migrating them to Commons. --BrokenSphere^{Msg me} 07:09, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ethnic composition of the ANA

Afghanistan is a country of minorities (see Demography of Afghanistan) and so we should mention the ethnic make up of the ANA. For example, according to this article on the ANA, 70% of the battalion commanders are Tajiks. On the other hand, the Taliban are mostly Pashtuns.