By Rusty
Very interesting findings sent to me by the Pashtun Peace Forum. This would be the same group that organized an anti-Taliban rally in Canada last month.
In a nutshell, the group found that in areas most affected by US strikes against high-value Taliban and al Qaeda figures (South & North Waziristan, Kurram Agency) that the population actually seemed to favor the strikes. These findings stand in stark contrast to the loud voices in the Pakistani media which paint the targeted air strikes as "civilian massacres".
The more pragmatic voices are no less opposed to the strikes, but on political grounds. They argue that while Pakistan does need to go after the militants, that allowing the US to use Predators for the strikes violates sovereignty and leads to more anti-American sentiment and increases Taliban sympathy.
I'll just go ahead and drop the entire press release below and let you decide how to interpret the statistics.
My natural pessimistic tendency is to interpret the data as pretty bad, given that it means large minorities in the areas most likely to shelter extremists do seem to be opposed to fighting al Qaeda and the Taliban. Read more ...
Very interesting findings sent to me by the Pashtun Peace Forum. This would be the same group that organized an anti-Taliban rally in Canada last month.
In a nutshell, the group found that in areas most affected by US strikes against high-value Taliban and al Qaeda figures (South & North Waziristan, Kurram Agency) that the population actually seemed to favor the strikes. These findings stand in stark contrast to the loud voices in the Pakistani media which paint the targeted air strikes as "civilian massacres".
The more pragmatic voices are no less opposed to the strikes, but on political grounds. They argue that while Pakistan does need to go after the militants, that allowing the US to use Predators for the strikes violates sovereignty and leads to more anti-American sentiment and increases Taliban sympathy.
I'll just go ahead and drop the entire press release below and let you decide how to interpret the statistics.
My natural pessimistic tendency is to interpret the data as pretty bad, given that it means large minorities in the areas most likely to shelter extremists do seem to be opposed to fighting al Qaeda and the Taliban. Read more ...
Source: The Jawa Report
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