New Data for Drone-Bombing Pakistan

Many moons ago, Noah Shachtman linked to a bunch of news stories about a survey in the FATA that indicated a narrow majority preferred U.S. bombing to Taliban advances. Shachtman properly noted that the group that conducted the interviews is an anti-Taliban activist group—certainly a great thing in most circumstances, but it does call into question the validity and methodology of their survey.

Here’s one big problem: they only surveyed 650 people. Given the FATA’s population, which is several million, there’s little chance—especially given the security situation—of getting even a reasonably representative group with an N of 650. Such concerns are the main reason why I tend to prefer the Understanding FATA surveys by the Community Appraisal and Motivation Program, or CAMP. Their latest (pdf), published in March (it appears the site has been Slashdotted), contains some pretty interesting findings:

• On human rights, a large proportion rejected practices which compromised women’s rights such as honour killings (60%) and forced marriage (88%).
• Approximately 50% believed that Afghan refugees had negatively affected Pakistan’s economy and undermined its security. 75% wanted to see Afghan refugees return to Afghanistan.
• While a plurality expressed dissatisfaction with their life in the FATA (50%), and a majority expressed a desire to emigrate from Pakistan (60%), both the U.S. and UK are deeply unpopular. In some indices, they are less popular than India.
• A plurality (45%) want Pakistan to be more like Saudi Arabia, and a large majority of respondents (74%) have a very favorable opinion of Saudi Arabia. (77% have an unfavorable view of the U.S.)

What the results also showed—at least in part, mind you—is why the government, with a sizable number of Pastun ANP delegates from NWFP in Parliament, would spend so much time trying to negotiate with the Taliban before starting to send in the Army.

None of this is to call the other survey wrong. In fact, both could easily be right, especially since they happened in different times and probable with different people (the CAMP survey suffers from fairly significant methodological flaws as well). But what it does show is that opinion is not gauged like it is in the U.S.—even if one survey rings more true than the other, we still lack sufficient data to call it either way. In either case, however, it is clear that the U.S. needs to spend more time persuading the Pakistani people of our intents and purposes there, rather than simply following bombs with (often unaccountable) cash.

This post was written by...

Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.

Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust