Originally Posted by
Webfoot
Our cultural misunderstandings inhibit our effective use of local or even Cat II terps. I was working with various units in Afghanistan and they kept complaining about the untrustworthiness of even their Cat IIs, US citizens all. When I asked the nature of the problem I was told that while they were often quite good at rapid translation and even limited document translations, each terp seemed to have a faulty memory when it came to certain tribes. Of course, each CAT II was from the good ole USofA but had previously lived in Afghanistan. Turns out that the terps retained the tribal loyalty and "overlooked" much of what could be considered "bad news" for that tribe, even if the terp in question had been a US citizen over 20 years. My solution was to mix the terps up, as the existing policy was to send a terp originating from, say, Kandahar province (lets make him a Achakzai of Durrani background) to Kandahar area, as he "understood" the culture better. I said to send anybody of Durrani background up into the Ghilzai areas and send Ghilzai terps to the Durrani areas. Then there would be no "loyalty conflict" based on regional association. Of course, Pushtu speaking terps from tribal confederacies in Pakistan were easier, just send them deeper into Afghanistan away from the border (say, Helmand or Nimruz provinces). Not always workable nor a surefire solution, but much better than nothing.
Don't know if it was enacted because of the fluidity of the terp length of service and replacement policies. Please don't misunderstand, the great majority of Cat IIs were loyal Americans but they had familial and tribal blinkers that they didn't realize they had. Baggage that needs to be acknowledged.