Obama's speech targets mobile users in Pakistan and Afghanistan

Tweet Pin It WASHINGTON :The White House said Thursday that it dubbed video clips of US President Barack Obama's speech this week on Afghanistan into Arabic, Dari, Pashtu and Urdu for distribution on mobile devices. The White House, in a blog post, said Internet penetration in Afghanistan and Pakistan is relatively low, just two percent and 11 percent respectively.

But it said the number of people in those countries with mobile devices is much higher - 52 percent of the 177 million people in Pakistan and 30 percent of the 28.4 million in Afghanistan. "Given this trend, we produced short video clips of the President's segment to Afghans and had it dubbed in Arabic, Dari, Pashtu, and Urdu in order for them to be distributed locally on mobile devices," the White House said.

"We're hopeful that leveraging technology this way will help us achieve the president's goal of increasing America's security and undercutting the appeal of al Qaeda and other extremists through global engagement," it said.

Earlier this year, the White House posted a video on its website featuring a simultaneous translation into Farsi of comments Obama made on Iran and a Farsi transcript of the remarks. Obama directed some of Tuesday's speech to the Afghan people saying "America seeks an end to this era of war and suffering" and has "no interest in occupying your country."