... which is that Arabic is the lingua franca for the entire region. It's even taught in public schools all the way over in Malaysia.

It's not needed as a lingua franca to communicate between communities within Afghanistan because Dari to some extent fulfills that role. Dari is close enough to Persian that movies dubbed in Persian are played in Afghan cinemas. Also because there's some multilingualism particularly with the smaller languages. If you go to Belgium, for example, you can get by with English because it's the regional lingua franca and enough people there know it. Despite that it's not an official language there even though there are two distinct languages used within the country.

All foreign press releases by the Taleban for example were in Arabic. A large corpus of Arabic documents was discovered post-invasion. Because Arabic is the regional lingua franca.

It's not like Pashto translators (which Obama actually also mentioned when he mentioned Arabic) grow on trees. It's better to be able to communicate in broken Arabic than not at all.

Arabic has utility in Afghanistan. It's known. When Afghans do business with the outside world they often do it in Arabic.

Keep in mind that before the U.S. ever invaded Iraq they were looking for Arabic translators for Afghanistan.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/asia/jan- june02/arabic_1-18.html

SPENCER MICHELS: The terrorism attacks and the war in Afghanistan have prompted many Americans to try to learn more about Islam and the Arab world. In addition, U.S. intelligence agencies and the military have been scrambling to hire or train speakers of Middle Eastern languages like Arabic, Farsi, and Pashto, all languages spoken in Afghanistan. This program in near-eastern studies and Arabic language at the University of California at Berkeley is one of fewer than a dozen at major U.S. universities. Sonia S'hiri teaches many of the hundred students who are enrolled in Arabic classes here. More students are expected next semester. But programs like Berkeley's are rare, as sociology graduate student Sara Gilman found out.

This is all without considering the presence of foreign fighters.

Please stop hitting the strawman.

Couple of quick points:

On 1. you mention strong Wahabi influence which confirms my claims that the Taleban had arabizing tendencies then try to debunk that by claiming that the Taleban has lineal descent from the Deobandi school which is irrelevant to the point.

On 2. You're pointing me at a paper that lumps in Indonesian pesantrens which are pretty much equivalent to Sunday schools as part of some kind of dangerous madrassa thing and also states that it's the traditional "quietist" schools (I don't think you can consider the taleban "quietist" or traditional) that teach the traditional rote memorization, and you're telling me to get an education.

Point conceded on 3. you're correct. It's Hindi not Hindu.

Well 5. is just a distraction they're both inaccurate transliterations. Aum, Om, big deal. If you really want to be technical about it, there should be a dash above the 'a' in "Qu'ran".

At this point we're just going to go around in circles, so I'm going to lay it all out. I have personal knowledge that Arabic translators are used to communicate with Afghans (because of Arabic being the regional lingua franca) so I'm willing to argue this point till the cows come home because that knowledge gives me confidence that I'm correct.

So, you don't have to answer this, it's just personal curiosity on my part. But what's your motivation in this argument? What gives you your confidence that you're correct?