I sat in on a briefing given by the captain in charge of our police mentor tesm once, and immediately keyed in on the lone Afghan who was scribbling notes into a tiny notebook. I thought to myself, praise Allah, we've got a smart one. I don't know how long he had been posted to the DC with the rest of the police, but I don't think any of our guys had keyed on his ability until I sat behind the collective group of blue-uniformed guys and watched the brief.
It's not necessarily a hard prerequisite, and you have to work with what you've got, but getting the troops to some semblance of literacy is a good goal. I think that the learning model (adult vs. child) needs to be looked at, because we cannot assume that they will learn in the fashion an adult should, just because they are an adult.
When we think of rag-tag armies and whipping them into shape, does anyone else drift to thoughts of Von Steuben, or is it just me? Worked for them eh?
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