Ignoring key realities in Afghanistan - language counts

I agree with much of Gilles Dorronsoro’s Oregonian guest opinion article “Proposal for more soldiers ignores key realities in Afghanistan.” (here).  A few thousand more US troops won’t help much. But, given this blogs advocacy of more foreign language programs for Oregon students, it was this part of the guest opinion that drew my attention:

Foreign aid imposes cooperation at a local level, creating tensions about how to define projects. (Should we build a school or a clinic? An irrigation system or a road?) These processes can easily upset local hierarchies, creating lasting resentment.

Frankly, we don't have the human resources to do work of this kind. Very few Westerners speak a local language, and it is too much to expect soldiers carrying heavy packs to have sustained contact with the population in hostile villages, where the threat of IEDs is always present.

Dorronsoro is saying that the US does not have enough aid workers who “speak a local language.” So, OK, let’s do something about that. We are going to be engaged in aiding Afghanistan for years or decades. Why not train more personnel in local Afghanistan languages. Oregon should play its part. I recently wrote the legislature’s Online Learning Task Force (here):

… And especially in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the near term conflict will be most intense, we need more personnel fluent in the languages of Afghan-Pakistan region. You can help (and, please, consider what not helping means).

We are not going to have classes in these languages in our public schools. But we can give access for those few students who want to serve their country to online courses in these languages. We can, for example, offer Pashto (through Rosetta Stone) to a student who wants to become a Marine and fight in Afghanistan

Comments

[Patrick Story]

"We are going to be engaged . . . for years or decades"

I hate to think that this terrible loss of life, not to mention the ruin of the US economy, suits you because it could justify your language training goals. Could you possibly reconsider, morally, the position you have put yourself into?

[irrigation systems]

a lot of work needs to be done to improve the scenario.on the top is the need of rescuers to speak local language. various irrigation projects need to be undertaken