WASHINGTON: A survey among Afghans indicates support is plummeting for the Kabul government and the United States and European troops trying to bolster it against insurgents, according to a report yesterday.
The decline is striking particularly in the last year, the poll shows, even as the Obama administration and NATO allies weigh moves to strengthen forces in the struggle with Taleban and other radical groups.
President Barack Obama has assigned high priority to the conflict, and the administration is weighing whether to send another 30,000 U.S. troops, almost doubling the 32,000 present.
Few Afghans felt encouraged by Obama’s election, however: Two in 10 said they thought he would make things better for the Afghan people, and nearly as many said they thought he would make things worse. The rest either expected no change or were waiting to see.
The poll — commissioned by ABC News, the BBC and ARD German TV - found that the number of Afghans who say their country is headed in the right direction has dropped to 40 percent, from 77 percent in 1995 when the survey was first conducted.
While 83 percent of Afghans expressed a favorable opinion of the United States in 2005, just 47 percent feel that way now. There was an 18 percent drop this year alone, according to polling results. Other negative findings include:
• 32 percent of Afghans credited the US with good performance, compared with 68 percent in 2005.
• 37 percent of Afghans said they supported US ally NATO in Afghanistan.
• 52 percent said they supported Afghan President Hamid Karzai and 49 percent said they backed his government. In 2005, support for Karzai was at 83 percent and for his government at 80 percent.
• 79 percent of Afghans said US and NATO air strikes were unacceptable, as the risk to civilians outweighs the value in fighting insurgents. The poll was based on in-person interviews with a random national sample of 1,534 Afghan adults from Dec. 30, 2008 to Jan. 12, 2009.
Field work was done by the Afghan Center for Socio-Economic and Opinion Research in Kabul. The interviews were conducted by 176 interviewers in 34 supervised teams and the results have a 2.5-point error margin.
