Template talk:Armed groups in the Iraqi conflict

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

No consensus to carry out the original proposal here. As there is nothing policy-based here, all arguements have been given equal weight. Aside from the fact that there has been little discusson around this, there are 2 votes on either side on this, neither is particually decisive in terms of my close, so this is stuck as no consensus. Mdann52 (talk) 11:48, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think that there is a big and confusing overlap in the information in this template between insurgency groups and Militia groups. Editors on Wikipedia I think have fairly argued that insurgent is now a less used than terms like militia and I think that there may be an argument to drop the title insurgent all together. I think that it is also of note that Islamist is a more commonly used term for many of the groups involved than jihadist and perhaps this could be used.

Propose placing all the "insurgents" contents into a unified militia section which could be listed as either "insurgents, militias and others" or just "militias and others" or "militias" or something else. Perhaps a third column of information could be added for each sectarian category as necessary. I would suggest that a division for "Sunni militias" could be presented as either "Pro-government" and "Against government" or by similar wording.

As far as I have seen the war constitutes a conflict in Sunni-Shia relations which has a major overlap as a pro/anti government civil war. I don't think that a distinction between insurgents and militias, if such a thing exists, is helpful.

I have recently placed the insurgent and militia contents together to aide more easy comparison.

GregKaye ✍♪ 11:29, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose Insurgent refers to an opposition against the government. Merriam-Webster defines 'insurgent' as:

a person who revolts against civil authority or an established government; especially : a rebel not recognized as a belligerent

• Militia refers to pretty much any non-armed-forces group that trains their members as soldiers. Merriam-Webster again, simply defining 'militia':

a group of people who are not part of the armed forces of a country but are trained like soldiers

For these reason, I oppose because militia and insurgent are not synonymous. --Mr. Guye (talk) 19:46, 1 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose Militia may or may not be organized (see Militia (United States) by US definition, but it's a uniformed military force that trains as a uniformed military force and obeys the international conventions of war. Not the bit about uniforms. Insurgents are non-uniformed forces frequently fighting with military weapons and do not abide by any conventions of war, hence are regarded as unlawful combatants and may or may not be citizens of the nation in which they are fighting. Rebels are essentially unlawful combatants, they typically also do not wear uniforms and frequently do not abide by any conventions of war and are from the nation in which they are fighting. To further confuse matters on a militia, the United States declares by law, all able bodies males between 17 and 45 and prior service members to age 64 as the unorganized militia. The organized militia is the National Guard, which remains under state control unless an federal state of emergency occurs and Congress calls up the National Guard for either service in their region, service in other regions or for war.Wzrd1 (talk) 04:20, 12 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Support because the oppose argument is exactly wrong. I wouldn't put too much trust on how uniformed or how organized militias are as compared to insurgent groups. Chairman Mao was leading both an insurgent group and a militia. This navbox was set up with the assumption that the militias were pro-Iraqi gov't and the insurgents were against. Reliable sources may call insurgent groups militias as they become better centralized. I don't see any real purpose in portraying a false dichotomy. Chris Troutman (talk) 01:06, 13 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• I don't think that hypothetical descriptions of American militia concepts are helpful here. What do sources say about forces in this conflict? bobrayner (talk) 00:18, 20 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.