Pakistanis biggest supports of Al-Qaida, Taliban

ISLAMABAD: How much should India fear Pakistan, considering a recent BBC 23-nation survey found that Pakistan and Egypt were the only countries to take a relatively positive view of al-Qaida. The poll said that only 19% of Pakistani respondents had a negative view of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network. ( Watch )

Should this be reason enough for India to worry about the stability and intentions of its next-door neighbour? Pakistani experts don’t think so. They say the survey actually shows Pakistanis as desperately keen to oppose the US rather than support al-Qaida. "I don’t think the public makes a distinction between opposing the United States and supporting the al-Qaida," says Ahmad Bilal Mehboob, executive director of the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT). "Washington has been backing unpopular regimes in both Egypt and Pakistan, thus giving birth to anti-US feelings, besides imposing the war against terror," he adds.

Kamran Rahmat, Islamabad-based news editor of television channel Dawn News, points to an "overriding anti-America public sentiment" in Pakistan.

There is some dispute over whether this anger is directed at the US as a whole or the Bush administration. Surprisingly, India seems to have gained from this turn of events as it is no longer seen as Pakistan’s Enemy Number One. Political analyst Ijaz Shafi Gilani says, "Undoubtedly, India was perceived as enemy number one by the Pakistani people for decades but that has changed over the last couple of years." He says that Pakistan’s rising hostility towards the US has tempered the anti-India feeling.

A Gallup poll in Pakistan, conducted in 2007, showed greater support (compared to previous years) for trade with India, followed by support for relaxing bilateral visa arrangements. There was less support for boosting bilateral cultural exchange. Similarly, a 2006 Gallup survey showed that half of the respondents favoured Pakistani actors working in the Indian entertainment industry, but 49% were against this and 1% said they were undecided or had no opinion.

But anti-India feelings do persist. Tariq Rahman, a professor at Islamabad’s Quaid-i-Azam University, says many Pakistanis believe that Indian consulates along the Afghan border are stoking low-intensity conflict in Balochistan and indirectly funding the Taliban. However, he insists that this anti-India feeling is greater in the NWFP region and Punjab, not in Sindh or Karachi.

Noted columnist Ayaz Amir says there is a feeling in some quarters that General Pervez Musharraf and his successor as president, Asif Zardari, have gone too far in their attempts to please the Indian leadership. He also believes that Islamabad has overstepped the mark in its repeated denunciations of terrorism.

Rahmat says it is important to understand that Pakistan’s residual anti-India feelings don’t necessarily stem from al-Qaida ideology. "Al-Qaida is not teaching its operatives to hate India as the US remains the sole target," he says. In other words, America’s pain is India’s gain.

But Ameer Yousafzai, a grocer from the NWFP’s Swat region, who has faced the brunt of the Pakistan Army’s yearlong operation against militants, does not mince words: "We should not be hypocrites. The US and India, both are our enemies. When India is waging a war against Pakistan, the US quietly stands aside. Now, India is happily seeing the Pakistanis die under American bombs and missiles." He believes the Army operation was meant to please Americans.

A majority of the people this correspondent spoke to was emphatic that the people have no love lost for al-Qaida or like-minded entities. Columnist Ayaz says: "With the ongoing US strikes inside Pakistan, anti-American feelings are bound to soar but the polls wrongly reflect that there is support for al-Qaida across the country." News of US troops' reinforcement in Afghanistan is viewed as US'preparation to invade its tribal areas. The PPP-led ruling coalition has been trying to sell the war on terror as Pakistan’s own war but few are listening.

Yet, Ayaz insists that Bin Laden is not a hero in most parts of the country and "the issue is not denunciation of Osama or al-Qaida; it’s the high handedness of the US that is relevant here."

The public anger is seen to be a result of the Musharraf regime’s policies and its flawed counter-terror strategy. "We were fighting for survival by tilling our farmland but the military operation uprooted us and claimed dozens of lives, though we never stood in the way of the government," says Ahmad Jan, whose entire tribe has been displaced from Bajaur Agency to Attock, about 100 km from Islamabad. He believes al-Qaida or Taliban may never become irrelevant so long as US troops stay in Afghanistan.

Many experts say polls to gauge Pakistan’s attitude to al-Qaida often use questionable methodology and betray suspect timing. PILDAT chief Bilal Mehboob recalls that another survey in January found that 12 % Pakistanis believed terrorism to be the biggest issue facing the nation but by June, only 2% were found to say terrorism and suicide bombings were the most important. Mehboob says the results would have been different had the poll been conducted after Marriot Hotel bombing just a few weeks ago.

Karachi-based sociologist Nazish Brohi believes that the newest BBC poll suggesting Pakistan’s 'positive'view of al-Qaida was conducted at a difficult time — from July to September, when "the US was violating Pakistani airspace frequently, along with an Army operation in Bajaur which resulted in massive displacement of people." Brohi explains that the al-Qaida "stands for anything in Pakistan that is anti-US or anti-state because the state is seen here as an entity that usurps the rights of the public". James Crabtree, a British national who visited various regions of Pakistan last year, says, "People on the streets didn’t dislike Americans, but did hate George Bush."

But the Pakistan Institute of Public Opinion (PIPO), the local affiliate of Gallup International that conducted the poll, says the BBC poll used the right methodology. A PIPO spokesman says 2,000 respondents were interviewed, their number being proportionate to the respective provincial population. He says the results were in line with the trend in 2006 — that the US and the war on terror have been unpopular since 9/11. But more empirical data may be required to establish a direct link between Pakistan’s alleged support for al-Qaida and its implications for South Asia, particularly India.