Pakistanis turn on Taliban, but resent U.S: poll

[ajpirzada]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Public opinion in Pakistan has turned sharply against the Taliban and other Islamist militants but Pakistanis still do not trust the United States and President Barack Obama, a poll showed on Wednesday.

The WorldPublicOpinion.org poll, conducted last month as Pakistan's army fought the Taliban in the Swat Valley, found that most Pakistanis see the Pakistani Taliban and al Qaeda as a critical threat to the nuclear-armed country.

Those Pakistanis who view Islamist militants and local Taliban as a critical threat to their country rose to 81 percent, up from 34 percent in a similar poll in late 2007, the University of Maryland polling project found.

Respondents who described al Qaeda's activities as a critical threat to Pakistan rose 41 percentage points to 82 percent in the same period.

The findings were based on face-to-face interviews of 1,000 adults in the Urdu language across Pakistan from May 17-28. The findings have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points, the University of Maryland polling group said.

The university's Program on International Policy Attitudes conducts polls around the world.

In the poll, seventy percent voiced sympathy for their government over the Pakistani Taliban in the fight for Swat, a scenic district near Pakistan's capital that was overrun by Islamist militants earlier this year.

Seventy-two percent said they were confident Pakistan's army could handle the situation.

WIDESPREAD REVULSION

The shift in Pakistani public opinion on Islamist militants operating within Pakistan represented a "sea change" caused by "widespread revulsion" at brutal tactics and undemocratic policies of the Taliban when they briefly controlled Swat, poll research director Clay Ramsay said in a statement.

He added that the poll indicated "the U.S. is resented just as much as before, despite the U.S. having a new president."

Sixty-two percent of those questioned expressed low or no confidence that Obama would do the right thing in world affairs. Only 32 percent stated they thought his policies would be better for Pakistan than predecessor George W. Bush's policies.

U.S. drone attacks on militant camps within Pakistan were called unjustified by 82 percent of those in the poll.

Large majorities opposed all aspects of the U.S.-led war in neighboring Afghanistan.

On Afghanistan, 61 percent said it would be bad if the Taliban took over that country, while 87 percent said Taliban groups who seek to overthrow the Afghan government should not be permitted to have bases in Pakistan.

Obama's election did not boost the popularity in Pakistan of the United States or U.S. policies, the poll indicated.

Seventy-two percent disapproved of the war in Afghanistan and 79 percent wanted it ended now, while 86 percent disapproved of Obama's decision to more than double the number of U.S. troops in that country, to 68,000, by the end of 2009.

Asked about Obama's goals, 93 percent agreed with the view that he sought to impose American culture on the Islamic world, and 90 percent supported the notion that he wanted to weaken and divide the Muslim world, the survey showed.

Pakistanis turn on Taliban, but resent U.S.: poll - Boston.com

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Wow - very interesting results.

Can't express how glad I am at the increasing numbers of Pakistanis realizing the threat the Taliban and AQ pose to Pakistan, and being supportive of the GoP's actions to deal with the threat.

I found the following result quite interesting as well, since it goes against the grain of conventional wisdom on Pakistani attitudes towards the Afghan Taliban.

"On Afghanistan, 61 percent said it would be bad if the Taliban took over that country, while 87 percent said Taliban groups who seek to overthrow the Afghan government should not be permitted to have bases in Pakistan."

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

"Asked about Obama's goals, 93 percent agreed with the view that he sought to impose American culture on the Islamic world, and 90 percent supported the notion that he wanted to weaken and divide the Muslim world, the survey showed."

Apparently Obama's 'speech to the Muslim world' didn't have much of an impact in Pakistan at all.

 

[Durran3]

"Asked about Obama's goals, 93 percent agreed with the view that he sought to impose American culture on the Islamic world, and 90 percent supported the notion that he wanted to weaken and divide the Muslim world, the survey showed."

Apparently Obama's 'speech to the Muslim world' didn't have much of an impact in Pakistan at all.

No offense but thats rather sad that 90% of the people in Pakistan think that way!! its rather absurd and ignorant. Thats why the majority of people in my opinion are just stupid, i don't believe in such things as 'Uniting the Muslim World'... i believe in looking after yourself interest as i see thats more of a progressive approach towards building Pakistan. I could care less about what happens in Saudi or Indonesia.. People need to put Pakistan First and foremost than care about what the 'Muslim world' thinks

 

[ajpirzada]

^^well if the question is about the muslim world then u have to answer it.

 

[ajpirzada]

overall everything almost stays the same except for this recent tide against taliban

pakistanis...
are against US war in afghanistan,
do not allow drone attacks,
dont expect obama to be successfull in implementing his policies,
still see US as one who is tryin to impose his way of life,
still see see US as one actin against muslim world/interests.

anyways the gud thing is that now gov enjoys huge support against taliban.

 

[Durran3]

^^well if the question is about the muslim world then u have to answer it.

True but would you like to elaborate on what exactly do you mean by Imposing 'American Values' on the islamic world?

I don't quiet understand what American Values.. is suppose to mean exactly? If Freedom of Thought, speech and conscious or the right to life, liberty and persuit of happiness are American values than i beg to differ.. I don't see them as American values i see them as 'Universal' values that every person is free to choose his/her destiny according to his will

 

[TalibanSwatter]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Public opinion in Pakistan has turned sharply against the Taliban and other Islamist militants but Pakistanis still do not trust the United States and President Barack Obama, a poll showed on Wednesday.


Those Pakistanis who view Islamist militants and local Taliban as a critical threat to their country rose to 81 percent.

Pakistanis turn on Taliban, but resent U.S.: poll - Boston.com

On the question of how the local taliban are viewed, an additional 14% view the local Taliban as an 'important but not critical threat' which means that 95% of the public considers the local taliban to be a THREAT whether critical or not.

 

[muse]

Some Pakistanis think in terms of Zero Sum game - I win, you lose - But U.S. policy is more nuanced - Pakistanis were not born yesterday, they know that the insurgency in Pakistan is sustained from outside Pakistan -- but now is not the time to identify who the major player is - the insurgency in Pakistan and the "nuanced" policy of the U.S. can be turned into a net plus.

What U.S policy makers - and remember that these are a small number of persons persuaded by "particular" premises, and remember that there are other who are not persuaded by these "particular" premises, though they are not ascendant in the pecking order - are looking to see how the Pakistani political and military establishment will react to U.S policy -- U.S policy is actually aimed at another region of Pakistan, not Waziristan, and U.S policy is not a zero sum game for U.S. policy makers -- So, how the Pakistani political and military establishment will react is key.

Pakistan can shape U.S policy by creating facts on the ground, One more time - Pakistan can shape U.S. policy by creating facts on the ground, in particular in Waziristan, but generally by taking a more assertive role inside Pakistan with a insistence by all means, to ensure that Islamism dies the death it so richly deserves, and to replace islamism by, for the lack of a better term, Pakistanism, that is to say a consensus idea encompassing structural reform to include political reform.

The bet against Pakistan by these small group of U.S policy makers is that is it does not have what it takes - the Gut, the intestinal fortitude - to not just survive but to assert itself, that it does not have a nationalistic mass or center of gravity focused on the idea of Pakistan and therefore that Pakistan is a poor bet and the U.S should actively promote those elsewhere which can partner with the U.S.

Should Pakistan create facts on the ground which negate this premise, the small of group of policy makers which have promoted this premise will not find themselves ascended among opinion makers and experts in U.S policy making circles.

There is a caveat here, usually the Pakistani tendency is to argue that the China will do X or Y or Z -- one can only hope that saner mindsets will prevail and the realization that this stage of Pakistan's journey as a nation state is the true test of Pakistani nationhood and that failure in this test will free it of any further tests.

All nation states in a globalized world must accept that they will be acted upon, however; the inability to act on others is a sure sign that the time for such a nation state to be, has passed.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

No offense but thats rather sad that 90% of the people in Pakistan think that way!! its rather absurd and ignorant. Thats why the majority of people in my opinion are just stupid, i don't believe in such things as 'Uniting the Muslim World'... i believe in looking after yourself interest as i see thats more of a progressive approach towards building Pakistan. I could care less about what happens in Saudi or Indonesia.. People need to put Pakistan First and foremost than care about what the 'Muslim world' thinks

I'll have to look up the actual polling data and questions, but that particular characterization may just have been the way the question was worded.

I find it somewhat implausible that a large number of people just happened to offer an identical opinion along the lines of 'America wants to divide the Muslim world'.

Going back to the anti-US sentiment - you have to realize that it builds upon a lot of issues, some that are in the context of a larger 'Islamic World' - such as the support for Palestine, the Iraq invasion, hostility to the Iranian regime etc. - and others that are very Pakistan specific - the sanctions against Pakistan for its weapons program, the theft of Pakistan's F-16's and the money we paid for them (this also works into a broader suspicion of US intentions towards Pakistan vis a vis India), the maligning of AQ Khan (who many Pakistanis believe was innocent) the double standards in offering a nuclear deal to India, the drone attacks, invasion of Afghanistan ....

In addition, you have these tirades and vilification campaigns against Pakistan in the US media every so often. All this analysis of how Pakistan is a 'failed state' , it is about to break up, its nukes need to be secured, it is giving nukes to AQ, its security forces are helping terrorists blah blah blah.

All this nonsense gets play in the Pakistani press and there is a significant section of the Pakistani population that also gets to read and see this propaganda first hand through the internet and TV.

You put all this together, and is it not obvious why there is such a distrust of the US?

 

[ajpirzada]

Some Pakistanis think in terms of Zero Sum game - I win, you lose - But U.S. policy is more nuanced - Pakistanis were not born yesterday, they know that the insurgency in Pakistan is sustained from outside Pakistan -- but now is not the time to identify who the major player is - the insurgency in Pakistan and the "nuanced" policy of the U.S. can be turned into a net plus.

What U.S policy makers - and remember that these are a small number of persons persuaded by "particular" premises, and remember that there are other who are not persuaded by these "particular" premises, though they are not ascendant in the pecking order - are looking to see how the Pakistani political and military establishment will react to U.S policy -- U.S policy is actually aimed at another region of Pakistan, not Waziristan, and U.S policy is not a zero sum game for U.S. policy makers -- So, how the Pakistani political and military establishment will react is key.

Pakistan can shape U.S policy by creating facts on the ground, One more time - Pakistan can shape U.S. policy by creating facts on the ground, in particular in Waziristan, but generally by taking a more assertive role inside Pakistan with a insistence by all means, to ensure that Islamism dies the death it so richly deserves, and to replace islamism by, for the lack of a better term, Pakistanism, that is to say a consensus idea encompassing structural reform to include political reform.

The bet against Pakistan by these small group of U.S policy makers is that is it does not have what it takes - the Gut, the intestinal fortitude - to not just survive but to assert itself, that it does not have a nationalistic mass or center of gravity focused on the idea of Pakistan and therefore that Pakistan is a poor bet and the U.S should actively promote those elsewhere which can partner with the U.S.

Should Pakistan create facts on the ground which negate this premise, the small of group of policy makers which have promoted this premise will not find themselves ascended among opinion makers and experts in U.S policy making circles.

There is a caveat here, usually the Pakistani tendency is to argue that the China will do X or Y or Z -- one can only hope that saner mindsets will prevail and the realization that this stage of Pakistan's journey as a nation state is the true test of Pakistani nationhood and that failure in this test will free it of any further tests.

All nation states in a globalized world must accept that they will be acted upon, however; the inability to act on others is a sure sign that the time for such a nation state to be, has passed.

agreed. except that the word extremism should be used and not islamism.

 

[muse]

You use Extremism, I'll use Islamism - Fair?


By the way, what do you make of this, Extremism or Islamism - or is it the same thing??? -- I'Know, you'll need some time to think about that it:

July 2, 2009
In Refugee Aid, Pakistan’s War Has New Front
By JANE PERLEZ and PIR ZUBAIR SHAH
QASIM PULA, Pakistan — Islamist charities and the United States are competing for the allegiance of the two million people displaced by the fight against the Taliban in Swat and other parts of Pakistan — and so far, the Islamists are in the lead.

Although the United States is the largest contributor to a United Nations relief effort, Pakistani authorities have refused to allow American officials or planes to deliver the aid in the camps for displaced people. The Pakistanis do not want to be associated with their unpopular ally.

Meanwhile, in the absence of effective aid from the government, hard-line Islamist charities are using the refugee crisis to push their anti-Western agenda and to sour public opinion against the war and America.

Last week, a crowd of men, the heads of households uprooted from Swat, gathered in this village in northwestern Pakistan for handouts for their desperate families. But before they could even get a can of cooking oil, the aid director for a staunchly anti-Western Islamic charity took full advantage of having a captive audience, exhorting the men to jihad.

“The Western organizations have spent millions and billions on family planning to destroy the Muslim family system,” said the aid director, Mehmood ul-Hassan, who represented Al Khidmat, a powerful charity of the strongly anti-American political party Jamaat-e-Islami.

The Western effort had failed, he said, but Pakistanis should show their strength by joining the fight against the infidels.

The authorities’ insistence that the Americans remain nearly invisible reveals the deep strains that continue to underlie the American-Pakistani relationship, even as cooperation improves in the fight against the Taliban, and public support for the war grows in Pakistan.

Yet Islamist and jihadist groups openly work the camps.

“Because of the lack of international agencies, there is a vacuum filled by actors that are Islamist and more than that, jihadist,” said Kristele Younes, a senior advocate with Refugees International, a Washington group established in 1979.

One of the most prominent jihadist charity groups, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, had been barred from the camps, according to Lt. Gen. Nadeem Ahmad, the head of the Pakistani Army’s disaster management group. The group was designated as a terrorist organization by the United Nations Security Council in December.

Nonetheless, it set up operations in Mardan under a new name, Falah-e-Insaniyat, according to Himayatullah Mayar, the mayor of Mardan. After the order to leave the area, Falah-e-Insaniyat went underground but still appeared to be operating to some extent, Mr. Mayar said.

Signs of the organizational strength and robust coffers of Islamist charities were easy to see around the camps, often in contrast to the lack of services offered by the government.

For example, Al Khidmat, Mr. Hassan’s group, arranged to bring in eye surgeons from Punjab to staff a free eye clinic for the displaced, offering cataract operations and eyeglasses.

“Government hospitals are nonexistent here, and we are able to treat not only the displaced but the whole community,” said one of the surgeons, Dr. Khalid Jamal.

Meanwhile, Mr. Hassan was busy checking new temporary schools, health clinics and four ambulances on 24-hour service that Al Khidmat had set up.

Every day, he said, he personally supervised the distribution of food at three different places — sometimes at a home, sometimes in a camp. So far, he said, he had covered 400 of 450 villages near the city of Swabi. Always, he said, before the food is distributed, he delivers his exhortation to jihad.

By contrast, although much American aid gets through, it is not branded as American, and Pakistani authorities insist that it be delivered in a “subtle” manner, General Ahmad said.

The general said he had told American officials there would be an “extremely negative” reaction if Americans were seen to be distributing aid. “I said they couldn’t fly in Chinooks, no way,” General Ahmad said, referring to American military helicopters. The United States, he said, was seen as “part of the problem.”

That is not what American officials had hoped for. At first, the exodus of people from Swat, many of whom had suffered from the brutality of the Taliban, seemed to present a chance for Washington to improve its image in Pakistan.

“There is an opportunity actually to provide services, much as we did with the earthquake relief, which had a profound impact on the perception of America,” Senator John Kerry, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said at a hearing attended by the Obama administration’s special envoy, Richard C. Holbrooke, at the start of the exodus.

In an effort to highlight American concern for the refugees, Mr. Holbrooke visited the camps in June, sitting on the floor of a sweltering tent and talking to people about their plight. “President Obama has sent us to see how we can help you,” he said. One result of the trip was an effort to send Pakistani-American female doctors to assist women in the camps.

According to the State Department, the United States has pledged $110 million for food and logistical support. In late May, the Defense Department sent several flights to Islamabad carrying ready-to-eat meals, environmentally controlled tents and water trucks. But ideas of winning back popularity with a big show of airlifts of American assistance on the scale of American earthquake relief to Kashmir in 2005 were rebuffed, and not only by the Pakistanis.

American nongovernmental organizations in Pakistan discouraged high-profile deliveries of United States government aid because anti-American sentiment was too widespread and the security risk to Americans in the camps was too high, said the head of one of the groups, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. There were many Taliban in the displaced camps, and they believed the Pakistani military was fighting against them in Swat on orders from Washington, the official said.

The restrictions on American assistance are clear in the camps and in villages like this one deep in the countryside around Mardan and Swabi, where Pakistani families have opened their homes to large numbers of displaced people.

American officials and their consultants were barely able to move beyond the highly visible refugee camps set up along the main highway between Islamabad and Peshawar, said Mahboob Mahmood, a Pakistani-American businessman who has visited the area to help find ways to bring additional aid.

“They have been almost completely neutered,” he said.

Who wins here, Mr. Pirzada? Is it Pakistan?

 

[inayatali]

Soon Pakistan will be free of Taliban?????????????

 

[sergente rehan]

True but would you like to elaborate on what exactly do you mean by Imposing 'American Values' on the islamic world?

I don't quiet understand what American Values.. is suppose to mean exactly? If Freedom of Thought, speech and conscious or the right to life, liberty and persuit of happiness are American values than i beg to differ.. I don't see them as American values i see them as 'Universal' values that every person is free to choose his/her destiny according to his will

Imposing these values by using brutal force isn't the correct way, anyway i think only americans in U.S. have all these universal values for only U.S. citizens bcz if you see how they treat a normal Muslim citizen of a Muslim country you will realize how they have these double standards.

Just take an example what about Pakistani citizens, haven't we got the same human rights that americans had? then why they are killing so many innocet Pakistani civilians with their drone attacks? why they are not releasing Doc. Afia? even they know that she's innocent! what about her childrens? what about Iraqi civilians, what about the afghani civilians? did they have no value? there are so many examples that shows the double standard that U.S. had towards Muslim world citizens.

I'll be always against U.S. untill they change their foreign policies toward Muslim world and stop with this crap war on terror (bcz it's all only for economic interests) which brings only more problems to the Muslim countries and stop invading only countries which have natural resources and benefits the U.S. economy instead of taking serious steps to help the countries which real needs their help like Palestine.

 

[sergente rehan]

Soon Pakistan will be free of Taliban?????????????

InshAllah we will free our society from these munafiqs!