U.S. Army Struggles to Grasp Foreign Cultures

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army plans to train its officers to think like their enemies and better understand foreign cultures after an Army report found that no one could have envisioned the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Small groups of officers soon will take classes in cultural anthropology and cross-cultural communication as U.S. troops continue to battle insurgents daily in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Academic experts welcomed the move, but said reshaping the U.S. military would be difficult, given continuing reports of religious intolerance at military institutions and charges of detainee abuse abroad.

The Army’s report, released last month, concludes that even seasoned analysts failed to predict a strike of the magnitude of the 2001 attacks because they based their assessments on U.S. culture, values and reasoning.

"Contemporary challenges and long-term objectives dictate a much deeper understanding of how U.S. adversaries and partners think — beyond cultural sensitivity to the idea of cultural apperception," said the report on "actionable intelligence."

Greg Fontenot, director of the new University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, said the military had long studied its enemies, but those skills had eroded during the Cold War when the primary foe was the Soviet Union.

After the fall of communism, when U.S. troops were sent to countries as diverse as Rwanda, Kosovo, Haiti and Kuwait, planners realized the enemy was no longer as predictable.

ARABIC, NOT IRAQI

Fontenot said the course would help officers "stand outside their own view" by using a range of case studies, rather than train them to be experts on specific cultures.

A pilot program to begin in January will offer an 18-week course, which Fontenot said he hoped could improve intelligence gathering in Iraq.

Initially, the Army will train one or two groups of up to 15 officers, a tiny number for an active-duty Army of nearly 500,000, although Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker eventually wants one such trained officer on each brigade.

At the same time, the Army is continuing to train more soldiers in Arabic, graduating 3,000 Arab-American translators just last month. It also has set up a center in Fort Lewis, Washington, to train interrogators how to handle prisoner operations, said Army Lt. Col. Carl Ey.

Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, head of Army intelligence and President Bush’s nominee as director of the National Security Agency, recently highlighted efforts to improve Army intelligence through better technology and improved training.

After spending time in the Middle East, Alexander told reporters he concluded that anti-U.S. sentiment in the region was complex and cumulative after years of negative perceptions, some dating back to the creation of Israel in 1948.

"This is going to be a war not of technology, but of people," he said, adding, "Most of the Arabs that I talk to really want to forge a friendship."

Even as Alexander cited the need for better cultural understanding, he called the language spoken in Iraq "Iraqi" instead of Arabic, and repeatedly called potential suspects "Abu," a honorific title meaning "father" in Arabic.

CONCEPTS OF HONOR

Lobna Ismail, who has done hundreds of cross-cultural training sessions for FBI officials, said the military’s failure to understand Arab concepts of honor — for instance by entering a house where women are alone — had already fueled perceptions in Iraq of American arrogance, costing the United States potential supporters.

Yvonne Haddad, professor of history at Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, faulted U.S. officials for alienating people in Islamic countries with speeches geared to appeal to the U.S. Christian right.

"Every time President Bush speaks, he creates more enemies," she said. "People think he has declared a war on Islam."

Haddad said she remained worried the military would use its newly acquired knowledge to "subjugate people rather than in trying to work with them."

The Council on American Islamic Relations welcomed efforts to better understand other cultures, but said it was continuing to monitor the U.S. military after reports of inappropriate proselytizing by evangelical Christians at the Air Force Academy, said spokesman Ibrahim Hooper.

An Air Force report last month faulted the academy for failing to accommodate "adherents to minority beliefs," but concluded there was no "overt religious discrimination."