As Patrick Frost of the FPA Afghanistan blog noted last week, the Asia Foundation recently released a report on Afghan public opinion. It paints a seemingly optimistic picture of the prospects for an ISAF success. The most newsworthy finding is that a majority of Afghans now show no support for armed insurgents. Only 40% say they have some sympathy for armed opposition, down from 56% last year. There’s a definite urban-rural difference – 66% express no sympathy for insurgents in urban areas, 52% for rural – though it’s a majority for both. And a more detailed regional breakdown shows there are still strongholds of insurgent support. This chart shows the percentage of Afghans that sympathize with the armed opposition by region:
But there’s high support for the Afghan National Police (ANP) – 77% strongly agreee or somewhat agree that the ANP helps improve security – and for the Afghan National Army (ANA) – 86% strongly agree or somewhat agree that the ANA helps improve security. And there’s high support for Taliban reconciliation – 83% approve of the Afghan government’s reconciliation efforts.
So do I care to take back my claim, made in an earlier blog post, that the reconciliation effort is doomed to fail? And do I also care to take back my claim, made in a statement published by the Euro-Atlantic Center, that civil war is likely to continue in Afghanistan indefinitely? I don’t. The poll didn’t address an essential question: Afghan perceptions of foreign troops. Though the poll did find that 70% strongly agree or somewhat agree that the ANA needs the support of foreign troops, and this figure is 69% for the ANP. And another poll found that a majority of Afghans in Helmand and Kandahar have never heard of the 9/11 attacks. There is, unfortunately, plenty of room for pessimism.
