Jim Lobe

Five years after the ouster of the Taliban, Afghans remain broadly supportive of their government and the Western forces that protect it, but that support appears to be slipping due primarily to frustration with the pace of reconstruction, according to a new survey released here this week.

That slippage is reflected in part in a sharp rise in the percentage of Afghans who have become more pessimistic over just the past year, according to the poll of more than 2,000 Afghans carried out last month by WorldPublicOpinion.org (WPO), a project of the Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA). Indeed, the percentage of Afghans who said that the country was going in the “wrong direction” rose three-fold since November 2005 — from 11 per cent to 35 per cent. Sixty-two per cent said they believed the country was going in the “right direction”, down from 83 per cent one year ago.

The growing pessimism has not, however, translated into growing support for the Taliban whose military resurgence over the past year has provoked growing concern here, among Washington’s partners in North Atlantic Treatry Orgnisation, as well as in Kabul itself. On the contrary, the fundamentalist movement is regarded even more unfavourably by the vast majority of the population than it was in 2005, according to the poll, which covered 32 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.

Seventy-one per cent of respondents said they held “very unfavourable views of the Taliban in the latest poll, compared to 62 per cent one year ago. Moreover, the great majority of Afghans (86 per cent) said they believe that the group’s overthrow was a “good thing” for Afghanistan, compared to 82 per cent who took that position last year. Nonetheless, as in many of the issues raised in the survey, there were important regional differences.

Karzai himself earned a 55 per cent approval rating from all Afghan respondents in the latest poll — a standing that President George W Bush would find enviable — but down from 68 per cent a year ago. Similarly, US forces received a favourable rating of 75 per cent, down from 83 per cent last year. Those who said their view of United States forces in Afghanistan was “very favourable” fell from 39 per cent to 28 per cent. These findings were very similar to those of another poll by ABC and BBC carried out in October. As to reconstruction, however, only 42 per cent rated progress in that area either “excellent” or “good”, while a majority of 58 per cent described it as “fair” or “poor”.

On another key issue, nearly one in four Afghans said they or someone in their family had been “personally affected by an act of corruption by governments” in the past year. The percentage, however, was significantly higher in the southern and eastern Pashtun areas (38 per cent) than in the central area around Kabul or in northern Afghanistan.

Remarking on the poll results, Seema Patel, a South Asia specialist at CSIS who has conducted extensive interviews in Afghanistan over the last two years, agreed that “Optimism in Afghanistan is fast declining” due mainly to frustration over progress in reconstruction, particularly in the south and the east.

“The findings of our group show a much bleaker outlook among the Afghans,” she said, noting in particular, that “a sense of insecurity is spreading across the country.”