Tactical Iraqi Teaches Troops Iraqi Gestures

Posted on February 21, 2006

U.S. military is using a game called Tactical Iraqi to learn how to use Iraqi gestures and communicate better with Iraqis. One of the gestures it teaches include how to ask someone to slow down.

Dr. Hannes Vilhjalmsson, a research scientist at the University of Southern California, tells BBC News, "In Iraq, to show sincerity you have to put more effort into your gestures. In Western countries, we control our body language more. In Arabic culture, it is important you show how open you are."

It sounds like it could be helpful and the troops in Iraq can use all the help they can get. The game was built using the Unreal Tournament game engine, which is a first-person shooter game. Now it is being used for gesturing instead of shooting.