The New America Foundation and Terror Free Tomorrow have released a new poll of residents in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas--an obviously difficult place to measure public opinion--finding that residents disapprove of the CIA drone strikes and American policies, but do want the Pakistani Army to be aggressive in fighting militants. The opposition to the U.S. is so fierce that while only one in ten believe suicide attacks are justified against Pakistani troops, six in ten--about as many as disapprove of the Afghan Taliban--think they're justified against American servicemembers.
More than three-quarters of FATA residents oppose American drone strikes. Indeed, only 16 percent think these strikes accurately target militants; 48 percent think they largely kill civilians and another 33 percent feel they kill both civilians and militants. Directed by the Central Intelligence Agency, missiles are launched from unmanned drone aircraft in the FATA region of Pakistan. President Obama has dramatically ramped up the drone program, authorizing 122 so far during his administration, more than double the number authorized by President George W. Bush during his entire eight-years in office.This may help account for why Obama is viewed unfavorably by 83 percent of FATA residents in our poll.
It's not really all that shocking that FATA residents don't like dodging missiles fired by flying robots. But according to the poll, al-Qaeda and other militants are also viewed unfavorably--"More than three-quarters of FATA residents oppose the presence inside their region of Al-Qaeda and over two-thirds the Pakistan Taliban," Mullah Omar's Afghan Taliban gets 60 percent disapproval. Another disturbing result for the U.S. is that even if FATA residents disapprove of militants and terrorists, they buy the underlying worldview of a clash of civilizations:
Nearly 80 percent of the people in FATA also oppose the U.S.-led “war on terror,” and believe its real purpose is to weaken and divide the Islamic world, while ensuring American domination. Only 10 percent thought the U.S. was motivated to defeat Al-Qaeda and its allies. Similarly, three-quarters of FATA residents thought that the continuing American occupation of Afghanistan was because of its larger war on Islam or part of an effort to secure oil and minerals in the region. 11 percent said it was because of the 9/11 attacks, and just 5 percent to prevent the Taliban from returning to power.
That is a tremendous propaganda victory for Islamic extremists. What's worse is that with the Republican Party legimitizing the conspiracy theories of the Islamophobic right, it's a battle that now has to be fought domestically as well as internationally.
