[Marxism] Anbar Province loves the USA (right)

[Anthony Boynton]

What They’re Saying in Anbar Province
By GARY LANGER Op-Ed in the NYT
Published: September 16, 2007

IN his address to the nation on Thursday, President
Bush singled out progress in Anbar Province as the
model for United States success in Iraq. The
president’s claims echoed those made earlier in the
week by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American
commander in Iraq, in his Congressional testimony. And
they raised a question worth examining: Do United
States military alliances with Sunni tribal leaders
truly reflect a turning of hearts and minds away from
Anbar’s bitter anti-Americanism?

The data from our latest Iraq poll suggest not.

Al Qaeda, it should be said, is overwhelmingly —
almost unanimously — unpopular in Anbar, as it is in
the rest of Iraq. But our enemies’ enemies are not
necessarily our friends. The United States, it turns
out, is equally unpopular there.

In a survey conducted Aug. 17-24 for ABC News, the BBC
and NHK, the Japanese broadcaster, among a random
national sample of 2,212 Iraqis, 72 percent in Anbar
expressed no confidence whatsoever in United States
forces. Seventy-six percent said the United States
should withdraw now — up from 49 percent when we
polled there in March, and far above the national
average.

Withdrawal timetable aside, every Anbar respondent in
our survey opposed the presence of American forces in
Iraq — 69 percent “strongly” so. Every Anbar
respondent called attacks on coalition forces
“acceptable,” far more than anywhere else in the
country. All called the United States-led invasion
wrong, including 68 percent who called it “absolutely
wrong.” No wonder: Anbar, in western Iraq, is almost
entirely populated by Sunni Arabs, long protected by
Saddam Hussein and dispossessed by his overthrow.

There are critical improvements in Anbar. Most
important have been remarkable advances in confidence
in the Iraqi Army and police. In ABC’s survey in
March, not a single respondent rated local security
positively — now 38 percent do. Nonetheless, nobody
surveyed in Anbar last month gave the United States
any credit. Ratings of living conditions remain
dismal: respondents were deeply dissatisfied with the
availability of electricity and fuel, jobs, medical
care and a host of other elements of daily life. And
the violence, while sharply down, has hardly ended:
One in four reported that car bombs or suicide attacks
had occurred near them in the last six months. Last
week’s murder of Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, an
Anbar sheik who had allied himself with the United
States, only underscored this grim reality.

Anbar’s tribal leaders may have any number of
motivations for their alliance with the United States.
It’s been reported that the United States government
has provided them arms, matériel and money, as well as
undertaking more than $700 million in reconstruction
projects in the province.

But it seems clear that popular sentiment in Anbar is
another matter entirely. Indeed, one other result from
our poll may be of particular interest to Anbar’s
tribal leaders and the United States military alike:
Just 23 percent in Anbar expressed confidence in their
“local leaders”; 77 percent had little or none. That’s
better than it was in March — but still nearly the
lowest level of confidence in local leaders we
measured anywhere in Iraq.

Confidence in local leaders, as it happens, is lower
only in Diyala — the other province Mr. Bush mentioned
in his speech as a focal point of progress in Iraq.

Gary Langer is the director of polling for ABC News.



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