US State Dept lacks people who speak Taliban’s language
LAHORE: The US government’s plan to expand civilian aid to Pakistan and Afghanistan is complicated by the fact that the State Department employs just 18 officers who can speak the language of the region where the Taliban operate. Two of them work in Kabul and five are in Peshawar. “It’s a grim illustration of two problems,” a former US ambassador to Afghanistan told USA Today. “First, there is no money, and second, there are no people.” In 2006, the Government Accountability Office found that nearly 30 percent of State Department employees based overseas in “language-designated positions” could not speak and write the local language well enough to meet basic requirements. After the September 11, the US military and the State Department boosted their training in Afghan languages. Seven years into the Afghanistan war, the Defence Department has trained 200 people in Pashto and 300 in Dari. California-based Defence Language Institute has given 10,000 people some basic exposure to Pashto and the Defence Department has given a $500,000 grant to Indiana University to train ROTC candidates in Pashto. In addition to the 18 who are proficient in Pashto, 82 State Department officers speak Dari. daily tmes monitor
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| Tuesday, February 09, 2010
