Afghan Poll Shows Foreign Troops Welcome
| 10/19/2007 | Posted by Patti under Afghanistan |
A public opinion poll was carried out in Afghanistan in September. Now, that is a pretty run of the mill matter in Canada, we get inundated with phone calls for polls for one thing or another on a regular basis. In Afghanistan there are no large scale databases to randomly survey the population and often no phones or lines to call people on if there was. Then there are the cultural issues, like women need to talk to women and men to men. One tribe wont always respond to another and so on.
This poll was carried out door to door with care paid to the gender and language of the pollster at each residence. The fact a poll could take place is progress, it would have been spotty at best five years ago. The results of the poll indicates that most Afghans feel that things are better than they were, support for the Taliban in most areas is low and for the most part, Afghani’s welcome the foreign troops while they rebuild and build their country.
I expect that Travers over at the Toronto Star will now have to write a column pontificating on how flawed the poll taking was as it doesn’t conform with his doom and gloom, long distance armchair analysis. One of these days he might get the gonads to travel over there and actually listen to the people on the ground.
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