Experts On Afghanistan Doubt Survey On Foreign Occupation: Results Are Impossible

[IndianaGreen]

Experts On Afghanistan Doubt Survey On Foreign Occupation: Results Are Impossible

A new survey of the Afghan people is being touted as evidence that hearts and minds may, in fact, be warming to the U.S.'s military presence, which is heading into its ninth year.

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, generally a critic of the continuation of the war, heralded the survey as hopeful news on Tuesday night.

But can it be taken seriously?

In a word, no, say people who have worked extensively on the ground in Afghanistan.

HuffPost interviewed Prakhar Sharma, head of research at the Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies (CAPS) in Kabul, who has done a large amount of public-opinion research work in Afghanistan, where he is based; Matthew Hoh, a foreign service officer who resigned last September in protest of the administration's Afghan policy; Anand Gopal, a Wall Street Journal reporter who has traveled widely in Afghanistan; and Christian Parenti, a reporter with The Nation who travels frequently to Afghanistan and was the field producer of the Afghanistan-based documentary The Fixer

Four of the five say that reliable survey results in Afghanistan are impossible for several obvious reasons, and some not so obvious. The obvious ones first: The Taliban controls large swaths of the country and the war has made much of the country unsafe to travel through. The Taliban doesn't do surveys, so anybody approached by somebody with a clipboard knows that the person either represents foreign troops, the central government or a private company associated with one or both.

Then there are the not-so-immediately obvious reasons: Afghanistan is a highly patriarchal society, meaning that getting a woman's true opinion is extremely hard. Sharma said that his research teams have never been able to get even close to the 50-50 male/female split that the ABC survey claims.

Getting a man's honest opinion is no simple task, either, he said, because the responses are calculated to protect and benefit the respondent's family and village. "The Afghans know it when they see sudden changes in development assistance, changes in government officers, police tashkils/numbers , more/less operations immediately after the polls. It is difficult to pretend to them that the polls do not matter. Their responses are therefore calculated," he said.

Those with experience in Afghanistan were skeptical that the surveyors actually went where they said they did. "If you look at it, the polling was conducted in built-up areas, in urban areas where we have our bases and where the Afghan government has a presence, primarily off the major highways," said Hoh. "So through the South and West of the country, primarily it was done right along Highway 1 where the government has control and where we have control. Off those areas, we don't have control."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/13/afghanistan-experts-doubt_n_422482.html

Here are the threads were the flawed survey was posted:

Poll: 7 in 10 Afghans support U.S. forces

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=4219906

Poll: 7 in 10 Afghans support US forces

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=7438570

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. So places where the Taliban are in control are publically unfavorable to the U.S.

Is that supposed to be a counterargument?