Our Diplomats' Arabic Handicap

The State Department has made a significant commitment to expanding language training, nonetheless. Enrollments in Arabic and other challenging regional languages such as Farsi and Uzbek increased more than 80 percent from 2003 to 2004, from 228 officers to 415. Training averaged only a couple of months per person, though -- pretty basic stuff delivered in a hurry for most of the participants, in other words.

But there's a second stopper. FSI is not really sure how much training it would take to get from a 3 to a 4 in any case, because FSI stops training at 3.

Training goes only to officers assigned to "language-designated" positions -- slots that have been officially determined to require language skills. Thus, a diplomat assigned to Washington cannot get advanced Arabic training until he or she is actually assigned to a language-designated job overseas. And then there's no time to build real competency. This set-up creates a strong disincentive to designate positions as requiring language skills. No embassy wants to restrict its search to the comparatively few officers already qualified in Arabic or, even worse, effectively give up the position for the two years required to train an officer to a level 3 -- and carry them on its budget the whole time they sit in language classes.

So no posts are designated above level 3, which means, naturally, that the Foreign Service does not offer training beyond the 3, either. If 3's want additional language training to improve their skills to a 4, they have to do it on their own time and their own nickel. (The Foreign Service Institute has a pilot "Beyond 3" program, but it had a mere two people in it as of the latest report.)

This is barrier number three: Foreign Service officers see few incentives to advance to high levels of Arabic language competence. There is no financial or career reward for qualifying at the higher levels. Moreover, to the extent that the time involved in language study detracts from diplomatic job responsibilities, the commitment to achieve near-fluency could even be a career-stopper.

Surely there's a better way. Short of adding the necessary people and money to expand full-time language training (the best solution, but a non-starter in the current budget environment), we could still make real progress, and quickly, by taking four steps.

First, we should allocate funds for part-time, on-the-job advanced language instruction at post and in Washington, targeting 3's and up. Second, we should make language training mandatory at all Middle Eastern posts (and, ideally, for Washington-based Foreign Service staff working on the region as well) and build it into the workload. Third, we should make sustained progress toward fluency an evaluation factor for all Foreign Service officers assigned to the region. And fourth, we should reward advanced fluency (3+ and above) with a pay premium, regardless of whether the diplomat in question is assigned to a language-designated post.

These requirements would add to the workload of American diplomats who are already overburdened. So a modest transfer of personnel slots to beef up embassy staffing levels in the Middle East would be a logical fifth requirement. We'd also need to increase the language training budget, but part-time language training, especially at post, is dirt cheap compared to other items on the global war on terrorism shopping list.

We just can't afford to keep missing what the Arab world is saying to us and miscommunicating our positions back to them. What better way to narrow the communications gap than to learn how to speak the Arab world's own language?

Author's e-mail : jbremer@kenan.org

Jennifer Bremer is a member of the business school faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an adviser to the university's Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations. As a Foreign Service officer in Cairo from 1977 to 1980, she earned a level 3 in spoken Arabic.