WASHINGTON, 5 June 2003 — With the war in Iraq a fresh memory, majorities of citizens in seven of eight Islamic countries surveyed in a new poll — including longtime US military ally Turkey — said they fear a US military attack.
The war has deepened hostility among Muslims toward the United States, damaged the image of the United Nations as a peacemaker, and convinced many Europeans that they need greater independence from the United States, the poll, part of the Pew Global Attitudes Project, found.
According to the poll, 74 percent of Indonesians, 72 percent of Nigerians and 72 percent of Pakistanis were “very worried” or “somewhat worried” about a perceived military threat from the United States. In Turkey, 71 percent had similar fears, as did 53 percent of Kuwaitis, who have also had a close relationship with the United States.
The survey, overseen by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, was conducted April 28 to May 15, and involved 16,000 interviews in 20 countries and parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip controlled by the Palestinian Authority.
It also indicated that, as the United States is pushing for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, there is a widespread view — even among Israelis — that the United States favors Israel too much. Of the 21 publics surveyed, pluralities or majorities in all but the United States believed that US policy favored Israel too much.
Among Israelis, 47 percent believe the United States favors Israel too much, while 38 percent say the policy is fair and 11 percent think the United States favors Palestinians too much.
Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Center, said the 47 percent figure reflects the existence of a large pro-peace movement in Israel, and that 15 percent of Israelis are Arab.
Kohut said the poll shows the challenge the administration faces in trying to win Islamic support for the US-led rebuilding of Iraq and US policy toward Israel and the Palestinians. The results also show the difficulty, he said, of trying to convince the public in Islamic nations that the US “war on terrorism” isn’t a war on Islam.
“It’s going to be a real challenge to turn Muslim opinion around,” Kohut said.
But Gary Schmitt, executive director of the Project for the New American Century, a conservative think tank, said the administration can overcome much of its problem with Muslim opinion if it can “put Iraq back on its feet in a successful way. That will do more for the polling than any amount of (US government produced) radio broadcasting.”
And in the case of some regimes, he said, it may be helpful “to have them fearful that we’re not going to tolerate certain kinds of behavior.”
The survey found that 76 percent of French, 57 percent of Germans, 62 percent of Spanish and 45 percent of the British believe Europe should become more independent from the United States.
It showed that European opinion of the United States bounced back somewhat between March, in the anxious pre-war period, and May, after the war ended.
Forty-eight percent of the British said they had a favorable opinion of the United States before the war; the figure rose to 70 percent in May. In Italy, 34 percent approved of the United States in March; the share rose to 60 percent last month.
But that bounce left favorable opinion of the United States still markedly lower than it was in 2002 in the five European countries surveyed.
There was also a sharp decline in approval of the United Nations, which has been looked on as an important international institution for avoiding wars.
Over the past year, the share of Americans who considered the United Nations “a good influence” fell from 72 percent to 43 percent. Over the same period, it slid from 75 percent to 47 percent in France, 79 percent to 46 percent in Germany, and from 78 percent to 41 percent in Great Britain.
The war did not greatly change opinion about the merits of using force against Saddam Hussein’s regime.
In countries that strongly opposed the war, “people overwhelmingly believed their countries made the right decision to stay out of the conflict,” the poll report said.
