US military struggling to recruit Arab-Americans

By Caroline Drees, Security Correspondent

DEARBORN, Michigan (Reuters) – The U.S. military is
struggling to recruit Arab-Americans for its war on terrorism
some five years after September 11, with many in the community
wary of U.S. foreign policy and fighting wars in the Middle
East.

Pentagon officials have often bemoaned the shortage of
soldiers with Arabic skills that would be invaluable on the
ground in Iraq, and could help translate a backlog of captured
or intercepted material that could be critical to fighting
militants.

Officials say that in a military of roughly 1.4 million
people, about 4,000 have some proficiency in Arabic. The
Pentagon says it will spend hundreds of millions of dollars in
the next five years to beef up its foreign language
capabilities, especially in Middle Eastern languages.

“What we’re looking for is people who have native skills,
who speak it fluently and who are also very familiar with the
culture over there,” said Capt. Hatem Abdine, a recruiter for
the California Army National Guard who is a naturalized
American of Syrian descent.

Since the 2001 attacks, the military has turned its
attention to the United States’ 3 million strong Arab-American
community in hopes of bridging a deficiency that has
complicated operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Communities such as Dearborn and neighboring areas around
Detroit, home to one of the biggest Arab populations outside
the Middle East with almost half a million Arab residents, are
among those receiving particular attention.

Gunnery Sgt. Wayne Goode, a Dearborn-based Marines
recruiter, said the Marine Corps had sent out a direct mailing
to Arab Americans after September 11 seeking linguists.

George Noirot, spokesman for the Army’s Great Lakes
Recruiting Battalion, which covers the area around Detroit,
said, “They (Arab-Americans) were anxious to work with us in
the Army because I got the feeling they really wanted to show
that they were Americans and love the country here.”

NUMBERS REMAIN LOW

But while recruitment of Arabic speakers may have
increased, officials admit numbers remain too low and
recruiters face tough challenges, including concerns in the
community about U.S. policies overseas and fighting a war
against fellow Arabs.

Many Arab-Americans also have felt singled out for
heightened scrutiny by U.S. law enforcement and other
authorities after the 2001 attacks, and may feel reluctant to
work for a government they feel has discriminated against them.

“A lot of policies seemed to focus on Arab-Americans after
9/11 so people asked: ‘Why should I be part of an entity that
is inflicting injustices or a selective approach on my own
community?”‘ said Imad Hamad, head of the American-Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee’s Dearborn office.

Hamad said his group encouraged Arab-Americans to enlist in
the military and praised the Army for its efforts.

The military says it has no statistics for the number of
Arab-Americans in uniform because it is not mandatory for
applicants to state their ethnicity.

It is currently bridging its shortfall in language skills
by hiring contractors. The Army has 5,900 of contractors in
Iraq.

The Association of Patriot Arab Americans in the Military
(APAAM), which was founded shortly after September 11, says
there are about 3,500 Arab-Americans in the armed forces,
including leaders such as Gen. John Abizaid, who oversees U.S.
military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as head of Central
Command.

“A lot of Arabs in this country are just increasingly
concerned about U.S. foreign policy in relation to the Middle
East,” said David Fawal, a Palestinian-American in the Navy
reserves, adding he did not share these views and did not
personally know what impact they had on recruitment.

Fawal, a lawyer based in Birmingham, Alabama, said he had
met very few Arab-Americans in his 16 years with the Navy, most
of them through APAAM. The group does not list the number of
its members but features about 20 profiles on its Web site.

Abdine said many Arab families also had come to the United
States to escape war and it was a “hard sell” to convince some
of them to go back to that.