Army Intelligence on Arab Culture

U.S. Army intelligence has produced a handbook that is intended "to
provide soldiers with a basic overview of Arab culture."

It begins with "Where is the Arab World?" and "What is an Arab?" and
proceeds onward to brief and elementary discussions of Arabic
language, culture, and politics.

Viewing the Arab world in this way, Army intelligence also puts itself
on display in the questions it poses and the answers it offers, but
it does so with some self-awareness and with nothing more offensive
than an occasional cliche.

"It is impossible to talk about groups of people without
generalizing," the document explains. "It then follows that it is
hard to talk about the culture of a group without generalizing. This
handbook attempts to be as accurate and specific as possible, but
inevitably contains such generalizations."

A copy of the new Handbook was obtained by Secrecy News.

See "Arab Cultural Awareness: 58 Factsheets," DCSINT Handbook No. 2,
Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, US Army Training and Doctrine
Command, January 2006:

http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/army/arabculture.pdf

Disclaimer! This is from Steven Aftergood's Secrecy News from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2006, Issue No. 32 March 10, 2006 Secrecy News http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/

Just curious. Something about FAS-PGS or Steve we should know?

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