New programs prepare troops,
civilians, for language and culture found in Afghanistan, Pakistan
By Pat Griffith, AUSA News
PRESIDIO OF MONTEREY,
Calif. - The Pentagon has
established two programs to help
service members get a better
grasp of language and culture in
Afghanistan and Pakistan (Af-Pak)
before deploying to the region.
Af-Pak Hands and Af-Pak
General Purpose Force (GPF)
were started within the past year
as satellite programs through the
Defense Language Institute (DLI)
and reflect a trend of enhancing
knowledge of language that has
been bolstered under Gen. David
Petraeus, then commander of
U.S. Central Command, and
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, then
International Security Assistance
Force commander.
“I believe that the senior
leadership certainly gets the idea
that language and culture has an
integral part of pre-deployment
training and is vitally important,
which is a major step in and of
itself,” said Steven Collins, dean of
field support for DLI Continuing
Education. “It’s very much a soft
skill. It’s not something that you go
out to a range and fire a weapon or
learn to drive a vehicle.”
Under Af-Pak Hands, midgrade and senior NCOs, officers
and DoD civilians go through
three phases to learn the languages
of Dari, Pashto and Urdu, which
are prominent in Afghanistan
and Pakistan. Phase I is a 16week course offered by DLI at
its satellite office in Washington.
When the troops deploy, they
will undergo Phase II training in
country from mobile DLI teams,
and Phase III training would
continue once they return.
The idea for Af-Pak Hands
harkens back to the days of the
10
British Empire, Collins said.
“They had people in the
colonial office that were constantly
going back and forth to [India
and Africa] and spending a career
getting to know the culture, the
people, the language, the region,”
Collins said. “[Petraeus and
McChrystal] determined that was
a key to our potential success in
Afghanistan.”
The idea is that when troops
aren’t in the region, they will still
be doing jobs at locations in the
United States or elsewhere that are
still focused on that region, Collins
said. It could be intelligence work
or just general staff work.
“Over really the next five to
10 years of their career as they
constantly cycle back and forth
to the region, we would continue
to push them upwards and get
them to a fairly proficient level of
training,” he said. “We would call
sort of level two to three, which
gets more to a professional level
that can be used in almost any
situation. A very high level.”
Over the next year, three more
satellite locations for Phase I
training will be added to include
one in Europe, he said.
The other program, Af-Pak
GPF, is aimed at getting one person
per platoon more proficient on the
Dari language over 16 weeks as
well, Collins said. Satellite programs
have already been established at
Fort Campbell, Ky., Fort Carson,
Colo., and Fort Drum, N.Y., and
seven more will b RFFVB