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Written question asked by Nick Harvey (Liberal Democrat) on Monday, 29 June 2009, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Wednesday, 1 July 2009. It was answered by Bill Rammell (Labour) on Tuesday, 7 July 2009 on behalf of the Ministry of Defence.

Iraq: Peacekeeping Operations

Question
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many members of the armed forces deployed in each region of Iraq (a) have been trained in each year since 2003 and (b) are being trained in each local Iraqi language.
Answer

Arabic is the most widely spoken language in Iraq. Apart from Arabic, a number of minority languages are spoken in Iraq. The only language group with a population over 1 million is Kurdish, in its various forms, and the only other language groups with a population over 100,000 are Chaldean Neo-Aramaic, Azeri and Farsi.The following table reflects the numbers of personnel trained in Arabic since 2003. Defence has not trained personnel in Kurdish. While Defence has a Farsi capability, no personnel have been trained in Farsi specifically for operations in Iraq, and neither Chaldean Neo-Aramic nor Azeri has ever been required in an Operation Telic context.The following table provides the available figures for training in Arabic.

Arabic SLP1 SLP2 SLP3 SLP4 Total
2009 1 3 0 0 4
2008 16 37 13 4 70
2007 67 88 26 5 186
2006 38 38 20 4 100
2005 40 16 19 3 78
2004 10 10 19 1 40
2003 1 3 16 0 20
Total 173 195 113 17 498

The above figures do not include figures for the special forces, and do not include personnel who have left the services since their language training and whose details are no longer available. The figures for 2009 are to date and do not include expected outputs for the remainder of the year.Entries are made against the year when qualifications were achieved. SLP levels can be defined as follows: SLP 1—Survival, SLP 2—Functional, SLP 3—Professional and SLP 4—Expert. Qualifications in speaking and listening skills have been used to determine the SLP level against which personnel are listed.The figures do not include personnel who received SLP 1 level training but were either not examined or did not pass the exam at this level. It is estimated that up to 200 personnel fall into this category.The figures do not reflect the very basic Arabic language training provided to all deploying personnel. During pre-deployment training, they have received some instruction in greetings and responses, words and phrases, and have been issued with a language aide-mémoire to enable basic communication.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
495 c660-1W; 283555
Session
2008-09
Subjects
Iraq Peacekeeping operations
Contains statistics
Yes
Link
View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk