Records for Farsi are available from 2001. Very little training in Pashto and Dari was conducted before 2005. This information is not held centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost. Farsi and Dari are very similar languages and many personnel trained in Farsi have also received some training in Dari.
The following tables provide the available figures for each of the three relevant languages.
SLP1 SLP2 SLP3 SLP4 Total 2009 18 2 2 0 22 2008 11 33 18 2 64 2007 65 34 6 0 105 2006 30 17 1 0 48 2005 7 0 0 0 7 Total 131 86 27 2 246
SLP1 SLP2 SLP3 SLP4 Total 2009 8 4 0 0 12 2008 6 2 1 0 9 2007 0 0 0 0 0 2006 6 6 0 0 12 2005 0 0 0 0 0 Total 20 12 1 0 33
SLP1 SLP2 SLP3 SLP4 Total 2009 0 0 0 0 0 2008 5 15 3 1 24 2007 18 20 7 1 46 2006 3 19 12 3 37 2005 1 8 1 2 12 2004 0 1 4 3 8 2003 0 2 2 3 7 2002 0 0 2 2 4 2001 0 1 0 2 3 Total 27 66 31 17 141
The figures in the table 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: SLP1—Survival, SLP2—Functional, SLP3—Professional and SLP4—Expert. Qualifications in speaking and listening skills have been used to determine the SLP level against which personnel are listed.
The figures for Pashto do not include personnel who received SLP1 level training but were not examined, or did not pass the exam, at this level. It is estimated that up to 200 personnel fall into this category.
In addition to this, all military personnel deploying to Afghanistan receive a little training from native speakers in very basic phrases, words and responses, and are issued with an aide-mémoire. Approximately 14,000 personnel have received this very basic training in the last year.
A number of nations have benefited from the UK-FR helicopter initiative to make their helicopters more deployable. The first three helicopters will deploy to Afghanistan as a direct result of the initiative from December this year. We expect a further five to deploy in 2010 and up to three more by end 2011. Additional contributions to the fund would further increase these numbers.