CIA sponsors Arabic festival

CIA sponsors Arabic festival in Dirborn District, Michigan to call for more translators from Arabic, Urdu and Pushtu.
Several Dirborn newspapers placed “social advertising” with photo of the Liberty Statue and the words that “Arabs has been serving this society for centuries. Now we need you more than ever”.

There has been a pressing need of Arabic translators in the USA since 9/11. Intelligence also needs those speaking the languages of Central Asia region. So far, this problem has not been solved. The intelligence has plenty of information and cannot translate it. Even the US State Department lacks Arabic language interpreters, it has only five people knowing Arabic and monitoring the news of Arabic TV Channels.

For three years the CIA cannot fill the interpreters’ positions. Many candidates are rejected by intelligence officers during interviews. CIA does not trust many applicants, while the US universities train few Arabic interpreters.

Lack of interpreters has been called one of the reasons of the US intelligence failures. The real situation in the Arabic world proved to be very different from the intelligence information. As a result, the USA got “Arabic Festival” in Iraq it had never expected to encounter.   

Sergey Borisov

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Author`s name Evgeniya Petrova
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