For all the challenges faced by United States its its struggle against Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda terrorist network, money has not been an issue so far. Afghanistan alone has cost more than $150 Billion dollars through 2007 alone, with another 38 Billion for 2008 forcasted. This does not include the $607 Billion allocated for Iraq through 2008 nor the approximate $ 439 Billion dollar budget allocated for the Defense Department in its yearly budget.

So if financial resources are the not the key (regardless of whether they are borrowed which is another matter of concern), what is the principal reason that the United States may lose the war on Al-Qaeda? There is no doubt that policy approaches and the war on Iraq are subjects that serve as legimate focuses on the possibility of the U.S. losing the war on terror. The answer however is much more simpler and astonishing.

Despite the fact that Osama bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda network have been in operation since the 1990s, US intelligence organizations are still severely hampered by a deficiency in obtaining local language experts.

Out of desperation and out of a lack of success, Asia, the CIA, FBI and the military are turning to the web to find speakers of Afghanistan and Central Asia.

Ahmed Rashid of the Telegraph in London reports that subscribers to internet servers in Central Asia and Afghanistan have received email advertisements for American citizens who can speak Farsi, Pashto, Dari, Turkmen and Uzbek. Several other languages including Urdu and of course Arabic are needed.

While it may seem strange to find languages like Uzbek on the list, 3,000 Uzbeks belonging to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan fight for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Ahmed Rashid continues to note that CIA agents reported that in the past seven years Western intelligence organizations have proven incapable of penetrating any of the extremist groups which have joined Al-Qaeda.

Critical intelligence groups simply lack the people who even speak the languages used by the terrorists. Rashid suggests that one possible reason why an attack on bin Laden is delayed is because the US army does not have a single person in its ranks who speaks Pashto, the language of the Taliban

An army that is willing to fight may exist, money to fight the war may be borrowed or raised, foreign policy can be altered, tactics can be changed, but the US is likely to lose the war unless basic communication skills in the various foreign languages spoken by expanding terrorist groups are not mastered.

Learning and mastering foreign languages is becoming a very serious issue.