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Three Language Enabled Airman Program Scholars recently played a vital role in a joint multi-national exercise, demonstrating how Culture plus Language equals Speed, not just during missions, but also in training with and building relationships with partners and allies.
Tech. Sgt. Abdullah Azzam, Tech. Sgt. Becker Almarsumi, and Master Sgt. Marsel Saadeh, all three Arabic LEAP Scholars, spent parts of April and May in Tunisia participating in African Lion 24 and working with military members of partners Tunisia and Libya. Their work during the exercise displayed the kind of close collaboration with allies and partners that is foundational to U.S. national security interests and to our collective ability to address the challenges presented by strategic competitors.
African Lion 24 is U.S. Africa Command's largest joint annual exercise. The exercise ran until May 10 in Tunisia but continued until May 31 in three other host nations: Morocco, Ghana, and Senegal. While more than 1,000 military personnel from the U.S. and Tunisia participated, more than 8,000 multinational service members from 27 countries and contingents from NATO also participated in the exercise.
“The African Lion exercise represents a significant multinational military collaboration, reflecting the growing importance of joint operations in modern defense strategies,” Saadeh said. “This multifaceted international exercise, held annually, serves as a pivotal platform for enhancing military interoperability, strengthening partnerships, and advancing collective security goals.”
According to Azzam, the LEAP Scholars were not only tasked to translate, but also to effectively use military terminology with our partners and allies.
“I was tasked to deliver linguistic support by completing real-time translation and interpretation on complex U.S doctrine to a class of 30 Tunisian and Libyan intelligence soldiers over the course of two weeks, totaling more than 50 hours of classroom instruction and 30 hours of scenario exercise execution,” he said.
The team’s ability to facilitate effective communication with our partners will help form stronger bonds and send a message to our competitors.
“The primary benefit of the African Lion exercise was its role in building partner capacity and strengthening alliances with key international partners,” Saadeh said. “This collaboration not only bolstered our collective defense capabilities but also served as a strategic deterrent to potential adversaries. By leading these efforts, we advanced our position in the ongoing great power competition.”
According to Scott Sturtevant, theater security cooperation coordinator with the U.S. Army’s 207th Military Intelligence Brigade-Theater, LEAP Scholars were indispensable to the success of African Lion.
“We were delighted to have USAF LEAP Airmen integrated into our training team during this year’s African Lion,” Sturtevant said. “The heritage-level language and cultural skills were of great value to the training event itself, and to the formal and informal military-to-military exchanges that took place. In the classroom, and on the training ground, the level of nuance and realism that LEAP airmen were able to add to training and role-playing elevated the entire exercise. On the margins of the training, LEAP linguists contributed substantially to the quality and accuracy of group and personal interactions between U.S. and Tunisian participants. And LEAP Scholars themselves undertook meaningful and important engagements with foreign partners that added value to the training, enhanced U.S.-Tunisian relations, and broadened the background and experience of the LEAP Scholars.”
In the end, no matter how successful a joint exercise is, the building of relationships with our partner nations is a process that is built on a person-to-person level, and LEAP Scholars are a valuable conduit of that.
“During one of the classes, the instructor wanted to bring the class together by having them talk about some of the difficulties they experienced during their day-to-day operation,” Azzam said. “As they started to tell their stories one by one, they realized that they all go through the same struggles regardless of where they come from or training level. Them realizing that they have something in common was essential in building a team. To me, I really enjoyed seeing them transition from strangers to a unified professional team in a short period of time.”
About LEAP
The Language Enabled Airman Program (LEAP) is an Air Force Culture and Language Center (AFCLC) managed, volunteer program open to Active Duty officer and enlisted Airmen and in most career fields. LEAP deliberately develops language enabled, cross-cultural service members across the General Purpose Force (GPF) with working-level foreign language proficiency. With these skills, LEAP Scholars can better support the application of air and space power through strengthening partnerships, interoperability, and adversary understanding.
About African Lion
African Lion is U.S. Africa Command's largest, premier, joint, annual exercise hosted by Morocco, Ghana, Senegal and Tunisia. This joint all-domain, multi-component, and multinational exercise, employs a full array of mission capabilities with the goal to strengthen interoperability among participants and build readiness to respond to crises and contingencies in Africa and around the world.
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About SETAF-AF
SETAF-AF provides U.S. Africa Command and U.S. Army Europe and Africa a dedicated headquarters to synchronize Army activities in Africa and scalable crisis-response options in Africa and Europe.
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