At one of the largest foreign language schools in the world, Marines are still predominantly learning Arabic.
Despite the massive drawdown of forces in Iraq in 2011, and other looming threats from rising near-peer competitors like Russia, China and North Korea, the largest language class occupied by Marines is Modern Standard Arabic.
“The military always prepares for the last war, not the next one,” said Sean Connery, a former Marine Arabic linguist who served nearly two years in Iraq.
Located just south of San Francisco on the California coast, the Defense Language Institute is the military’s premier foreign language training center, where more than 3,000 service members learn a vast array of languages.
Of the 250 Marines that make up the small Marine Detachment at the Presidio, those Marines are currently learning Arabic Modern Standard, Levantine Arabic, Chinese, French, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Pashto, Persian-Farsi, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog and Urdu.
Modern Standard Arabic has roughly 40 students, according to Lt. Col. Judd Shell, the commanding officer of the DLI Marine detachment.
Many of these students are future intelligence analysts who go on to specialize in signals intelligence and electronic warfare, where language skills are a necessary component to their job field.
“I am not surprised that Arabic is still the largest class at DLI for Marines,” said Connery, who attended DLI in 2002. “But I don’t know about the other branches that focus more on strategic intelligence than tactical intelligence.”
These numbers mean not much has changed for the Corps with regard to its language and intelligence priorities since the U.S. invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003.
In the runup to the invasion of Iraq, there were two entire platoons of Marines dedicated to Arabic out of a total of four, Connery said.
While the military drew down forces and vacated Iraq in 2011 the region has remained a hotbed of insurgent and terrorist activity, exacerbated by the Arab Spring that toppled regimes across the region and resulted in devastating civil wars in places like Libya, Yemen and Syria.
Jennifer Cafarella, an expert in the Islamic State at the Institute for the Study of War, said, “The drawdown and limited Marine role are wishful thinking and not reflective of reality. We still have a big Arabic-speaking al-Qaida affiliate in Syria, for example.”
The Corps still has a major role to play in the Middle East, with its expeditionary forces capable of rapid ship-to-shore deployment, the Marines serve as a 911 force in waiting, which also means reacting to the daily grind of conflict and instability across much of North Africa and the Middle East.
Early last spring, a small detachment of roughly 400 Marines deployed to Syria to aid U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces with 24-hour artillery support.
Arabic also is one of the top five most commonly spoken languages by population, with more than 400 million speakers.
“I’m not sure I can predict exactly what role the Marines could end up playing, but the U.S. is a long way from achieving its national security objectives in the Middle East,” Cafarella said. “Elite American forces are correct to continue to prepare for contingencies.”
Shawn Snow is the senior reporter for Marine Corps Times and a Marine Corps veteran.
