Canadian diplomats largely speechless in Afghanistan Only a handful of Afghan task force staff speak the country's languages, a serious deficit according to critics. By Jeff Davis Published November 11, 2009

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Eight years into Canada's mission in Afghanistan, there are only a half dozen government officials with a fluent command of Afghan languages, Embassy has learned.

Opposition critics are now questioning why language training has not been made a priority, noting the government has spent tens of thousands of dollars on translation, but almost $10 million trying to sell the mission to Canadians. They are also wondering why Canada's Afghan diaspora has not been brought into the tent so they can put their linguistic and cultural insights to good use.

And though Afghanistan Task Force officials say they manage by relying heavily on locally engaged translators, a former mission official is urging current staff to hit the books, saying important messages often get lost in translation.

The Canadian government has Afghanistan task forces in three departments: Foreign Affairs, CIDA and the Privy Council Office. DFAIT spokesman Jean-Bruno Villeneuve said the three task forces have 252 staff in total. Of these, six, or 2.3 per cent, are fluent in Dari or Pashtu.

DFAIT's Afghanistan Task Force has 52 Ottawa-based employees, as well as 18 posted in Kabul and 23 in Kandahar. Of these, Mr. Villeneuve wrote, "one DFAIT official working in Kabul speaks Dari."

CIDA's Afghanistan and Pakistan Task Force, meanwhile, has 133 employees. Of these, 25 are in Afghanistan, while another six are in neighbouring Pakistan. Four CIDA staff members are completely fluent in Dari/Farsi and Pashtu, while an undisclosed number of others have "working knowledge" of Dari, Farsi and Pashtu. Mr. Villeneuve added that "intensive Pashtu language instruction" is underway for select senior staff, such as CIDA's current development director.

The PCO Task Force, meanwhile, has 26 employees, "of which one is fluent in Dari," he wrote.

Mr. Villeneuve said Canadian officials depend largely on locally-engaged Afghans, who speak English or French, to communicate. These Afghans, he wrote, "play an important role supporting engagement with local officials, the public and key interlocutors on a regular basis...in partnership and under the guidance of Canada-based staff."

He added that the task forces are "confident that current translation/interpretation arrangements meet our needs." He said they keep abreast of Afghan news and opinion through an "established local media monitoring capacity" in Kabul and Kandahar. Canadians also rely on "international partners [who] provide a valuable role in sharing their information and analysis of what is happening in the Afghan media."

Afghanistan has two official languages and a number of minority ones. About half of Afghans speak Dari, a Persian dialect, as their first language. Another 35 to 40 per cent speak Pashtu, an Indo-Iranian language also spoken by ethnic Pashtuns in Pakistan.

Someone with first-hand experience working with translators is Nipa Bannerjee, who worked in Kabul from 2003 to 2006 as CIDA's head of aid for Afghanistan. Ms. Bannerjee said that in Kabul, most officials from the Afghan and allied governments speak English.

But while one can navigate Kabul's linguistic environment with relative ease, it's a different situation in the South.

"Speaking Dari and Pashtu is not really absolutely essential if you work at our embassy in Kabul, because most of the [Afghan] government people you deal with speak English," she said. "However, in Kandahar what is required is working very closely with the communities, and if you do not know the language it will be difficult."

Ms. Bannerjee said she does not speak an Afghan language herself, and relied heavily on non-verbal communication to supplement the work of her interpreters. Kandahar's tribal elders do not expect foreigners to speak Pashtu, she said, and the most important thing is to be able to establish a connection, communicate empathy, and show you are not there to impose.

Having worked with a number of Afghan interpreters herself, Ms. Bannerjee said most were "excellent," though not all. At times, she said, interpreters would stray from direct translation into "misinterpretations, as well as deliberate wrong interpretations"

Instead of translating directly, Ms. Bannerjee said, interpreters would sometimes put their own spin on the message. In doing so, she said, her interpreter would sometimes offend villagers by being "insensitive" or "editorializing" on her words

"I think sometimes he sort of put a lot of additional colour on things the villagers were saying, and I was told that by people who were watching the translation and spoke both languages that he was exaggerating a bit, and that I would say that was deliberate."

'A need to ratchet up'

Liberal Foreign Affairs critic Bob Rae said the task forces' current language skills are clearly not up to snuff, and that Canadian diplomats need to speak and listen for themselves if they are to communicate properly with Afghans.

"There is a tremendous advantage of being able to understand colloquialisms, asides, comments, tone and everything else, even understanding when someone is joking or someone is serious," he said. "The fact that that capability isn't there and we have to rely almost entirely on others to get it is a significant problem.

"We've been there now for 10 [sic] years, at some point you have to allocate the resources to say this is a significant issue for us and we're going to develop the skill base," Mr. Rae added.

NDP Foreign Affairs critic Paul Dewar called the fact that the task force has so few Dari and Pashtu speakers negligent and irresponsible. He said one of his own four staffers speaks Dari, and questioned why the government could not also recruit employees with the right language skills.

Rather, instead of building language capacity, he charged, the government is focusing on public relations here in Canada. Mr. Dewar said that while the government has spent $38,000 on translating documents in Afghan languages to French or English, it has spent some $9.2 million communicating with Canadians about the war. He received those figures from the government following an order paper question.

"What it says is they're more interested in putting out the government's spin on the war than they are in finding out what's going on on the ground in Afghanistan to shape our policy," he said.

Fen Hampson, the director of the Carleton University's Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, said there's "obviously a need to ratchet up" the task force's language skills. Due to the extensive information shared between coalition partners, and the communications systems the task force has developed, he said he wouldn't call the task force's language capacity "deficient." He said, however, that there is a need for improvement, and that there is really no replacement for language training.

"There's no substitution for both language capacity and what I would call cross-cultural awareness, which usually comes from having a language capacity," he said. "Particularly when you're trying to do difficult things and really understand what's going on in not only a very different kind of place, but also a very fractured social and political environment."

While language training is expensive, said one retired ambassador who asked not to be named, such investments are simply necessary if Canada is to have a "world class foreign service."

"You've got to be prepared to pour money into language training when required, and sometimes on an urgent basis," he said.

He said the ability of our diplomats to speak foreign languages is of an overriding importance, and that language training should not be targeted as a cost-cutting measure.

"Accountants shouldn't be in charge of this," he said. "It's a strategic issue whether you can communicate with others."

Ms. Bannerjee said she thinks the fast rotational rhythm of civilian staff, who rarely remain in Afghanistan for more than a year, is a major reason for the language deficiency.

"The thing is people don't stay longer than nine months," she said. "Is it worth investing the time and money in training Canadians, who don't have any language base in Dari and Pashtu, to be there for nine months?"

While training is one option, another is recruiting task force staff from a largely untapped resource: Canada's 48,000-strong Afghan diaspora.

To Mr. Dewar, the diaspora is an obvious place to look for candidates who could boost the task force's language skills. These bilingual and bicultural Canadians, he said, could serve as "connective tissue" and give Canada's mission a leg up.

"I think we haven't recruited people appropriately for this mission," he said. "I meet with people in the diaspora community all the time and they want to help. Why aren't we taking advantage of that? That's the Canadian advantage; our diversity."

Mr. Rae agreed, saying Canada must "cast our net wider in terms of the groups of people from which you are gaining recruits."

Embassy asked the Afghanistan Task Force what efforts have been made to recruit staff from the Afghan diaspora, but no response was provided by press time.

But while they have the language skills, Mr. Hampson warned that diaspora members can bring unwanted political baggage with them, and may not be as current with their homeland as one might think.

"Regardless of who you hire you want to make sure they are not bringing a political agenda with them into public service," he said. "They have to have a commitment to the values of being an impartial public servant."

jdavis@embassymag.ca