A really disturbing Iraq poll

The Financial Times reports on some unsettling poll results from Iraq:

An Iraqi poll to be released next week shows a surge in the popularity of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical young Shia cleric fighting coalition forces, and suggests nearly nine out of 10 Iraqis see US troops as occupiers and not liberators or peacekeepers. The poll was conducted by the one-year-old Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, which is considered reliable enough for the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority to have submitted questions to be included in the study. Although the results of any poll in Iraq’s traumatised society should be taken with caution, the survey highlights the difficulties facing the US authorities in Baghdad as they confront Mr Sadr, who launched an insurgency against the US-led occupation last month…. Saadoun Duleimi, head of the centre, said more than half of a representative sample – comprising 1,600 Shia, Sunni Arabs and Kurds polled in all Iraq’s main regions – wanted coalition troops to leave Iraq. This compares with about 20 per cent in an October survey. Some 88 per cent of respondents said they now regarded coalition forces in Iraq as occupiers. “Iraqis always contrast American actions with American promises and there’s now a wide gap in credibility,” said Mr Duleimi, who belongs to one of the country’s big Sunni tribes. “In this climate, fighting has given Moqtada credibility because he’s the only Iraqi man who stood up against the occupation forces.”…. Respondents saw Mr Sadr as Iraq’s second most influential figure after Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country’s most senior Shia cleric. Some 32 per cent of respondents said they strongly supported Mr Sadr and another 36 per cent somewhat supported him.

The one piece of good news that skeptics and optimists about Iraq could agree upon was that Sadr did not command significant amounts of support among the Iraqi populace. This poll makes it much tougher to maintain that assertion. This isn’t a question of media bias — this is a very uncomfortable reality that must be acknowledged by policymakers and oundits of all stripes. The one possible caveat, ironically, is that the poll was taken before the Abu Ghraib scandals [How the hell is that good news?–ed. Because that also means the poll was likely taken before a) U.S. troops demonstrated they were willing to take on Sadr’s militia; and b) Grand Ayatollah Sistani vocally turned against Sadr. If Reuel Marc Gerecht is correct in saying that the prison scandals “have not elicited much condemnation from Iraq’s Arab Shiites and Sunni Kurds, who represent about 80 percent of the country’s population,” then Sadr’s popularity might actually have declined since the poll was taken.]