Virtualizing those critical language resources

In our previous travels abroad, in places far off the beaten track, we have often had occasion to require the kinds of vocabulary not commonly included in typical dictionaries or phrase books. Often, the approximations one must resort to when discussing narrowly specific professional subjects can be quite humorous – especially given our typical none too literate grasp of the local lingua franca in those hotspots where we never personally had expected to find ourselves. (For as much as we encourage those entering the profession to pursue language skills on their target account to the best possible proficiency, we are acutely aware from our own experiences – and those of many of our contemporaries – that with the pace one’s accounts tend to change these days, it is all too often more likely that a mid-career professional will find themselves with a slice of too many tongues at far too shallow a level of proficiency for anything but the more rudimentary of street level conversations. But then again – with only a few exceptions – the members of our skunkworks freely admit to not having much of a head for any language, English included.)

But along the way we have acquired quite a range of more useful texts to help with the problems of finding the right word to express those more obscure professional concepts. These resources usually of military origin, and usually among the older and forgotten sections of the stacks. One of our most useful finds, a number of years ago, turned out to have far greater utility than we ever anticipated as the Long War emerged. Thus we carried for a number of years in our kit an increasingly dog eared copy of a French- Arabic lexicon of military terminology originally authored in the 1920’s – yet surprisingly useful even today.

The long disused texts within the virtual stacks of the major digitization projects (including the Million Books project and Google’s own book effort) have once again provided us with an example which may perhaps be more generally useful for those that do not wish the burden of having to relay their speech through multiple imperfect lenses.

The volume is “English-Arabic vocabulary, for the use of officials in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan”, and was the product of the intelligence department of the Egyptian Army (and its British advisors) in 1905. It is both a “survival” level language resource as well as a compilation of military terminology translation.

Interested readers may also find an English-Arabic dictionary “For the Use of Both Travellers and Students” for from 1882 of some value, although it is far more general in nature.

These are the kinds of things that ought to have been made available through more concerted efforts at the very start of the Long War, as more modern resources were rapidly being created. (Though we do note that Anglo-Egyptian intelligence only came to compile its volume long after the British intervention against the Madhi’s forces in the Sudan…) Nonetheless, in both cases better late than never, and hopefully these kind of resources found in the back archives will prove of some use to those who still find themselves in the far flung locales of the world. We are certain it will prove far less heavy an item on those long treks when one must carry one’s own ruck.

Strange meat in the cooking pot

When instructing intelligence professionals, it is often difficult to find cases which can be used for exercises designed to improve political, military and transnational issues assessments in short sessions – particularly those conducted at the unclassified level - without touching upon accounts in which one or more of the students may have previous experience. While expertise in intelligence is never usually a bad thing, it does introduce distorting effects to the instructor’s attempts to evaluate a student’s mastery of core competencies and learning objectives. We will not go so far as to say it is an unfair advantage for the knowledgeable student – after all, they did invest the time and energy to understand often complex subjects, and this will serve them well in other aspects of their professional life. Nor can we expect students to come to our classroom tabula rasa – in fact, a good organization’s selection process should ensure that even entry level professionals (or academic students) bring something unique to the table; and we by no means are solely responsible for teaching only new candidates in the field.

Further, when finding the teaching cases and other examples to be used in the classroom, we emphasize the need to select the kind of edge incidents which exist at the intersections between a number of accounts. Nothing turns a student off more quickly than thinking a case does not apply to their assignment and needs –particularly so if that student has rarely rotated between organizations and billets, and has a narrowly constructed view of what it means to be engaged in the activity of intelligence. For this reason, we constantly quest for new material which may feed into the kinds of innovative and unconventional cases and exercises that will challenge students to get out of their existing mindset and truly begin to master their craft.

We are thus grateful to tdaxp for pointing out recent media coverage of the tribulations of the pygmies of the Congo (DRC). Amongst the other savagery of the continuing conflict in the troubled country – already an excellent teaching example for a variety of counterinsurgency, counter-smuggling, and other transnational issues problems – recent reporting now adds the problems of human trafficking and cannibalism. This is not the first time such stories have surfaced, but UN investigations are another thing entirely.

We have previously written about earlier, effective teaching exercises involving organ smuggling and corpse trafficking conspiracies. Such teaching cases have been greatly enhanced by the recent media coverage of the bone trade from India, which serve to illustrate well the complex relationships between black markets and legitimate industries in these spaces. We have no doubt that a case built upon the Congo incidents will also be effective in introducing a new set of problems and perspectives for the analyst and manager alike – especially as it more deeply reaches into the challenges of understanding events amongst “people of whom we know nothing”.

Blinded panopticon

Continuing the weekend’s brief examination of the more public aspects of operational tradecraft, we briefly wish to touch upon the growing phenomena of surveillance cameras in the UK.

The Ring of Steel has been heralded as the most significant implementation of ubiquitous imaging in an urban environment ever created. However, its effectiveness for primary anti-crime purposes has been questionable given the continuing increase in all manner of offenses, against the backdrop of an ever less engaged policing strategy and an increasingly dysfunctional justice system.

Nonetheless, such as system creates clear difficulties to clandestine operations in London and environs – as do less sophisticated implementations throughout Europe. But it is these program’s lesser cousins that draw our attention now – the automatic speed camera, as they have apparently also drawn the attention of less than happy local residents.

The revenue generation purposes of speed cameras and red light cameras have been debated against their efficacy in reducing traffic accidents and fatalities. However, there is definitely something highly intrusive in the state’s constant, automated presence in even the remotest parts of the countryside. This has clearly produced a significant reaction, as documented in a number of attacks designed to disable these surveillance systems.

We find it even more significant that the most effective attack is apparently a variant of necklacing, in which a subject is imprisoned within a tire doused in gasoline and set aflame. The tactic was most famously applied to human victims in South Africa and Haiti, particularly in cases where the individual was suspected of informing to authorities.

We would venture to guess that there is a psychological message here, above and beyond the practical considerations of effective TTP for attacking such installations. No doubt we will see other attacks against future autonomous capabilities also modeled on such resonant histories. (Perhaps this is an area to be further explored through efforts such as Mountainrunner’s research into the psychological impact of unmanned systems in the battlespace.)

There are also lessons here for any designer (or collection manager) responsible for large scale imaging (or biometric) installations, particularly for counterinsurgency applications and other situations where the communities under observation may share cultural commonalities to such reactions – and especially if a mediated reinforcement mechanism is developed to popularize and celebrate the results of successful attacks.