A new poll from the Pew Research Center shows a massive opposition among Pakistani voters to US foreign policy in the region, with some six in 10 identifying the United States as “the enemy” compared to only one in 10 identifying them as a partner.
Other key figures in the poll showed nearly two thirds of the Pakistani population want the US to ends its occupation of neighboring Afghanistan. Only 8% of Pakistanis have any confidence that President Obama will make good decisions on foreign policy. Trust and support for the US was down virtually across the board from previous tolls, while the number who saw the Taliban as a threat dropped.
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley conceded that there still exists a “deficit of trust” with the Pakistani public, but it seems that the really issue is that, while the US is attempting to buy the public’s support with massive aid, they continue to demand ever more aggressive offensives against Pakistan’s tribal areas.
Pakistanis seem to have noticed that while these offensives rarely net any terror leaders of note, they have provoked an increasing number of attacks against cities across the rest of Pakistan. The poll also suggests that despite these attacks, people aren’t growing any more afraid of the Taliban so much as more afraid that US foreign policy will provoke them further.