What we have is a real failure to communicate

Lost in Babylon
An Iraq War translator's inside take on America's failure to communicate

By Marc Herman

TOWER OF BABEL Translator Dustin Langan says the government thinks talk is cheapLast year, the Hamilton-Baker commission reported that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad had only six fluent Arabic speakers on its staff—a fact that went largely unnoticed next to ostensibly bigger and more pressing problems with the war in Iraq. But one wonders if a failure to communicate isn't the root problem of the fiasco. How can the U.S. reach hearts and minds if they can't even speak the language?

"The [linguists] are looked down on in the army as prima donnas who need a slap-down. They don't see it as a tool. Patriot missiles are seen as a tool"The lack of Arabic translators in Iraq appears to stem from a Bush Administration decision to outsource translation services to private contractors. Called "linguistic support," these companies, two of the largest of which are Titan Corporation and DynCorp International, have received billions of dollars to provide language interpreters to the Iraq reconstruction effort. But many of the supposed "translators" sent to Iraq were untrained, had poor language skills, or couldn't speak Arabic at all. In many cases the contractors appear to have conducted no screenings or interviews with prospective translators. And Titan Corporation interpreters are accused of involvement in two cases of prisoner abuse in Iraq and one case of espionage at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

For an inside look at the U.S.'s failure to communicate, Radar spoke with Dustin Langan, who worked as a translator in Iraq for defense contractor MZM Incorporated for 11 months between 2003 and 2004. Later, MZM's CEO at the time, Mitchell Wade, pleaded guilty to bribing then-Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA) in exchange for access to no-bid contracts with the Pentagon. Langan, for his part, worked as an interpreter for U.S. and coalition officials in Iraq at mass gravesites, in interview rooms of the doomed "de-Baathification" process, and throughout the city of Baghdad. He left Iraq in 2004, wrote a satirical novel based on his experience, and now works as a linguistics consultant in Barcelona, Spain.

We asked Langan for an inside take on why, after four years of engagement, we still can't talk to the Iraqis.

LOST IN TRANSLATION With the help of an interpreter, a Baghdad resident talks with a US soldierRADAR: Had you ever worked for a defense contractor before working for MZM?

DUSTIN LANGAN: In September 2002 I went and worked for REEP Inc., which is another small contractor with the Defense Department. They had acquired this contract to take six intermediate-level Arabic linguists to spend two weeks in an "Iso-immersion" environment [where soldiers speak Arabic in an isolated environment]. REEP had this house in New Hampshire and they contacted me by e-mail, out of the blue. They asked me if I was interested in going and teaching the course.

What were you doing at the time?

I was waiting tables at a Chinese restaurant.

How long had you studied Arabic for?

I had attended the Defense Language Institute [DLI] in 1994 and then I did a year of intensive self-study, before I studied at the University of Washington.

So you had been out of Arabic from the mid-'90s to 2002 when they hired you to teach soldiers Arabic prior to their Iraq deployment.

That's right, with zero experience. I'd never been to a Middle Eastern country.

Do you feel you were qualified for the job?

Was I the right guy to teach the course? No.

Did they give you any instructions?

I asked them, "What do you want me to do?" And they said, "You're the expert." Look, it was that REEP got the contract and then they sent an e-mail to me, because it looked like I spoke Arabic, asking me if I would come teach the course. That was it. There was no interview. There was no anything. No accountability. Nothing.

How did they know you really spoke Arabic?

Because it said so on my resumé. Because I said so when they asked me.

So you teach the course and you go back to the Chinese restaurant. A year later, MZM Inc. contacts you.

Six months. They just said, "We have a contract to send linguists to support the Department of Defense in Iraq, would you be interested in going?" I called to ask about it, and we talked about five minutes. I said at first I was not really interested.

Why not?

Because I didn't support the war. My knee-jerk reaction was not to touch it with a ten-foot pole. And the guy said, "I really think you should reconsider." Which basically means he really needs me and doesn't really care who I am. That's what I found out later.

And MZM hired you without an interview?

Zero. Basically MZM had 22 slots to fill for the contract with the Department of Defense. Each linguist filled a slot, and those slots had to be useful in advancing the military's goals.


TICKED OFF Barbara BodineSo no one seemed concerned about the lack of screening?
I never met her, but Barbara Bodine [the former U.S. Ambassador to Yemen], she was there [in Iraq], and my understanding is she was outraged when she heard that we had not been screened. But she was fired and sent home almost immediately.
So what was your assessment of your fellow translators?
Two of the 22 were Farsi speakers.

Intentionally?

If it was intentional, that intention was never communicated to anybody that would be working with these linguists.

Is Farsi useful in Iraq?

Everyone was pretty confused about why they were there. One of them decided he was not being useful, was earning money for doing nothing and it was nonsense, so he went home. The other had a master's degree in political science but he never used it for anything. But nobody could find anything to do with him as a Farsi linguist and he couldn't find a job and was just trying to justify being there, but no one could find anything for him to do.

These guys didn't have any useful skills?

These are the crucial first four months. Everything's super crucial at the beginning. And he did get placed in the end, eavesdropping on Iranian websites. Of course he could have done that from Virginia. One of the guys who was hired didn't speak Arabic at all.

What happened to him?

They did not send him home. MZM had given orders to keep him in place because the contract worked as such that there were 22 slots, so we had to provide a piece of paper with 22 names on it, and we had to prove that these were 22 people around somewhere doing something. And there were no questions asked. There was no review. They didn't want to pull him out of there because he was a body.

Why not hire Iraqis?

They soon figured out they needed to do that. They opened the doors to hire Iraqi translators. But they like to have Americans—it's a big issue, loyalty. But they did hire several hundred Iraqi interpreters right off the street. No interview process: "Do you speak English?" They were paid ten dollars a day.

Were they effective?

Bilingualism does not give someone the skill set to interpret.

Which skills do?

Discretion, attention to detail, meticulousness. An ability to remove yourself from the situation.

Did Iraqi translators allow a closer relationship with other Iraqis, at least?

Iraqi interpreters aren't always the solution they seem to be. A lot of Iraqis don't trust other Iraqis. And at that time I was frustrated and often annoyed that Iraqis would say to me, "I want to talk to you." And I would say, "What about this guy? He's Iraqi." And they'd say, "I want you." Because I'm not Iraqi and don't know his family and I can't go call somebody and say something. It's a tricky issue. But then other times, the Egyptian or the Lebanese interpreter has the cultural knowledge.

"They [hired] several hundred Iraqi interpreters right off the street. No interview process: 'Do you speak English?' Bilingualism does not give someone the skill set to interpret"[Iraqi translators] have been treated terribly. They've been killed. They have not been protected. They have not received visas or anything. They're being killed at very high rates. The result is many people now in Iraq think if you work with the coalition you're an idiot, because you're working with someone who doesn't care about you, and then you're killed. Some have to wear facemasks. I know people were wearing facemasks at the beginning, in interrogations. Titan hires them. I remember Ted Koppel came in, none of the Iraqis wanted to be in [Koppel's report]. They didn't want their faces on TV.

How do people react to you? You're very American-looking.

They were accepting ... I was less and less the interpreter and more and more what I think we should have more people doing: doing a real job and speaking Arabic while doing it. I was mostly interacting directly with Iraqis in Arabic, and that's what was so valuable, that's why we were able to build up some trust. Even if we weren't able to deliver them any money, we were able to deliver them ideas. We were never given a budget to provide them with anything else that might really have been useful, but we were able to build up trust.

Did the Army address the language problem?

The [linguists] are looked down on in the army as prima donnas who need a slap-down. And c'mon, recruiters? When I went in, I said I wanted to join the army to go to language school. That was why I wanted to go in. The recruiter I was talking to, his eyes glazed over. He had no idea what I was talking about. There's no awareness of it. They don't see it as a tool. Patriot missiles are seen as a tool.

How many interpreters do you think we need in Iraq?

I'd hate to give a number. Ideally every mission would have one or two interpreters. If you're going to raid houses you bring an interpreter. You'd be amazed how many don't. They just go in and say, "We're looking for guns."

BUSTED Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham was found guilty of conspiracy and tax evasion for accepting more than $2.4 million in bribes from MZM Is there something Americans should know how to say in Arabic? Pronounce it Ee-rahk, not Eye-Rack. And Moo-sleem, not Maaah-zlum. Muslim means "person who submits to Allah." Maaah-zlem sounds like a word that means "oppressor." Interesting, and a problem.
You also took part in de-Baathification interviews.

It was for public utilities. The Australian guy that was running that, he was a good guy too. He thought that he was going to be an advisor, not running the whole thing. He was told he could pick a team. But then we had to do de-Baathification interviews. We'd sit down in a room in the palace. The people were former experts, former government employees. You've got to assume at least some of them knew their jobs and some were just from Tikrit, family members who'd gotten jobs.

Was it an intense interrogation?

Nah, man. We had some stock questions: "Do you still support the Baath Party?" One guy in particular, he laughed. "Of course not," he said, "you've dissolved it." We asked them what their jobs used to be, and what they wanted their jobs to be now.

Did you find yourself getting drawn into analysis or politics? Or were you able to just repeat the words back and forth and stay out of it most of the time?

I couldn't keep myself out of it. The soldier turns to the translator and says, "Is this guy lying or not?" Man, I don't know, I'm not trained to detect that.

We did some de-Baathification interviews with five generals, ranking generals, in the Iraqi equivalent of the [U.S. Army] Corps of Engineers. They told us that before the war they were interested in two things: making the occasional bridge and land mines. There were I don't know how many land mines left over from the Iran-Iraq war and the invasion? So the people from the State Department who were commissioned to clean up land mines, they picked out these generals, and they wanted to have an Iraqi mine action agency, which I helped them set up. They had a mammoth task. So we went through the interviews with these five generals. They were interesting people. They were interested in working.

What was it like translating for an Iraqi general?

It was an intimate atmosphere, we'd seen each other many times before, I think they really wanted to work with the de-mining group. It was relaxed. It was before they replaced the windows in the palace, so it was like being outside. It was casual. But then something would happen. Like I was brought into a room, and someone told me that they have information on one of the generals. I was put in many sensitive situations like that.

What happened to the generals?

They were excluded from working with the Coalition because of their Baathist history. The American State Department officials tried to get a waver, and it wasn't granted. So these Generals were excluded because, I don't know, someone thought they drank blood.


LANGUAGE BARRIER A U.S. general chats with a Baghdad shopkeeper via his translatorDid you witness translators abusing their position?
All the time. Since I hadn't supported the war I didn't have a lot of enthusiasm for bringing the "bad guys" to justice. I had an Iraqi-American Shi'a friend who participated, and he made sure they knew that they were gonna "git em"—show those people who were really in charge.

Was that something you grappled with?

Absolutely. I was very careful to maintain distance, but who knows, maybe I get something in two questions later. Like in the way I might respond. There's a lot of subliminal stuff going on.

With all the desire to find a solution in Iraq, is it still the case that speaking to the Iraqis isn't something we take seriously?

It's because we don't value foreign language. Not just for ourselves but strategically. I think most people that are involved consider it a troublesome chore. It's annoying that other countries speak other languages and it would be easier if they spoke English.

So the Iraqis will just learn English at this point?

They've gone through so much. They went through Saddam Hussein. They went through our sanctions program. Now this. Trying to get them to trust you is just really, really hard. We're not speaking their language. If we want a partnership with them, if they're hurt, it's time to speak softly to them.

Original article posted here.