Pakistanis Heart Drone Attacks, Survey Says

Maybe the Pakistanis don't mind the killer drone strikes too much, after all.

For months, American and Pakistani observers have worried that the unmanned aerial assaults on militants in Pakistan could wind up destabilizing the country. "If we want to strengthen our friends and weaken our enemies in Pakistan, bombing Pakistani villages with unmanned drones is totally counterproductive," U.S. counterinsurgency adviser Dr. David Kilcullen recently told Danger Room. The attacks -- and the civilian casualties that follow -- have "now moved America into the position of 'principal hate figure' and all-purpose scapegoat," the News of Pakistan warned.

But a survey of Pakistan's tribal regions, released today in Pakistan's Daily Times, tells a different story. "Over two-thirds of the people viewed Al-Qaeda and the Taliban as enemy number one, and wanted the Pakistani army to clear the area of the militants. A little under two-thirds want the Americans to continue the drone attack[s] because the Pakistani army is unable or unwilling to retake the territory from the Taliban," researcher Farhat Taj says.

58% disagreed that "anti-American feelings in the area increased due to drone attacks." 52% said the "drones are accurate in their strikes," according to Taj. Only a minority -- 45% -- said the unmanned strikes spark "fear and terror in the common people."

There are people who are linked with the Taliban. Terrorists visit their houses as guests and live in the houses and hujras. The drones['] attacks kill women and small children of the hosts. These are innocent deaths because the women and children have no role in the men's links with terrorists.

Other innocent victims are local people who just happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Now, any public opinion poll of an area as rural and as underdeveloped as Pakistan's tribal wildlands has to be viewed with a gimlet eye. And Taj's group, the Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy, isn't exactly a collection of impartial observers -- here is a photo gallery from one of their many anti-Taliban protests.

Spencer Ackerman cautions against reading too much into Taj's data. "Forty-five percent of respondents who say that the drone strikes cause 'fear and terror in the common people' is a very large figure," he writes. "Just because it’s a narrow minority that lives in fear of having a missile descend out of nowhere is no excuse for profligacy in dropping one. That's a number that doesn't indicate a great margin for error. Indeed, overinterpreting that figure is pretty much what al-Qaeda hopes we'll do."
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