Waiting: Afghans crave deliverance from war, but confidence and trust are dwindling

A new survey of public opinion in Afghanistan has delivered mixed results – a blend of nuanced signals that will almost certainly be misunderstood and exploited by foreign politicians seeking to cover the failures of their own Afghan initiatives.

The first hints of misinterpretation were evident, last Friday, in the upbeat manner in which the poll findings were reported by the Canadian media organizations that sponsored the survey – the CBC, La Presse and the Globe and Mail.

True enough, on the positive side, the poll confirms a situation reported regularly in these web pages: a commanding majority of the Afghan people are prepared to tolerate, even welcome, the presence of foreign military forces to combat the Taliban and aid with reconstruction.

But in every almost every aspect, the polls figures represent a continuing decline of public confidence.

This was true even with the question of foreign military activities. Sixty per cent of the 1,578 men and women questioned answered that the foreigners’ presence was a good thing. That’s considerably less than the 77 per cent of people who said they viewed NATO forces positively in a poll reported in Dec. 2006 by World Public Opinion.

Most worrying is the proportion of the population who say they feel Afghanistan is headed in the right direction. While the 51 per cent “yes” response recorded by the CBC/Globe/La Presse poll might seem promising, it’s down from the 55 per cent finding recorded just one year ago, in Oct. 2006, in a poll by ABC and BBC news.

Significantly, that result was sharply down from the findings of an ABC/BBC poll one year earlier, in 2005, when 77 per cent felt the country was going the right way. (Both the ABC/BBC and World Public Opinion surveys used the same agency, D3 Systems/ACSOR, that was sub-contracted by the CBC/Globe/La Press pollster, Environics, for the new survey.)

Regarding President Karzai’s approval ratings, the latest poll results appear bright at first blush: more than 70 per cent of Afghans say the president’s doing a good job. But that’s down from the 90 per cent positives recorded by the World Public Opinion poll 10 months ago.

As well, the new Canadian poll was conducted in the third week of September, before the Taliban’s gruesome Ramadan bombing campaign. The Karzai regime and its foreign sponsors have failed to stem the waves of violence, which now regularly lap into the heart of Kabul.

The security crisis, in itself, cannot negate the promising aspects of Afghan public opinion. If the new Canadian poll shouts out one message unequivocally, it is this: the West’s Afghan initiative can and should succeed. 

But only if NATO’s political bosses can come up with new strategies - plans based on a sober acknowledgement of the chronic flaws of the international effort, and a determination to shore up the two weakest flanks: Pakistan, and Karzai’s crumbling regime.

Don’t hold your breath on that happening.

Because for politicians and diplomats who crave PR over policy, and the semblance of progress over real results, these poll numbers will likely be as delusive, and addictive, as shots of pure Afghan heroin.