Afghanistan supports the troops

A new poll is out in Afghanistan and it shows continued strong local support for the international military presence: The survey done by the company Environics for CBC, The Globe and Mail and La Presse, questioned more than 1,500 Afghans. According to the survey 60 percent of those polled saw the presence of foreign troops ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

A new poll is out in Afghanistan and it shows continued strong local support for the international military presence:

A new poll is out in Afghanistan and it shows continued strong local support for the international military presence:

The survey done by the company Environics for CBC, The Globe and Mail and La Presse, questioned more than 1,500 Afghans.

According to the survey 60 percent of those polled saw the presence of foreign troops in their country as positive while 16 percent saw it as a bad thing. In the south, in the Kandahar region, where the presence of Taliban is stronger than in the north, the percentage of people opposed to NATO troops' presence is higher at 23 percent but 61 percent still are in favor.

That result in the south is remarkable, given the difficulties NATO has had asserting control, the steady stream of complaints about civilian deaths, and the lingering Pashtun distrust of the Karzai government. Perhaps the result will stiffen the spines of NATO's reluctant European troop contributors, who are meeting today in the Netherlands. But that might be hoping for too much.

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

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