sample. folks were on the main supporter. folks who were living next to the ttp, they were using the data as a metric, folks were more positive about the strikes. . .

these may seem strange that they are included here, but they are routinely asked in the questions in which it operates. it is a good calibration of how pakistan these duties, and it gives them a trendline on how pakistanis see this. to my knowledge, you have not put out from grindle differences. we ask pakistanis what they believe to be a u.s. goal. again, in the vip is a complete out liar. i don't know why people in india p would have this view. obviously overall, there is not a lot of optimism in the punjab or sindh that this is a goal.

there is a reason why this question is important in pakistan. i spent a lot of time looking at militancy in that country. even though the militant groups have not sent folks over, although there was a suicide bombing in 2004 that involved writs of palestine origin. they are contained in the theater, meaning afghanistan, pakistan, and india with a few oddballs pop in up in iraq and elsewhere. i have found in the literature of pakistan the military groups that there is a huge motivator. if you look at the poetry, the posters, the palestinian issue is a recurrent theme across these militant groups. if you are thinking about what might be a metric of support for some of these militant groups, this is an important question,

even though it is useful in benchmarking pakistan. with that caveat, nwfp is certainly an allied air. this is a question that pipa asked all over the place over the years. people seem to think that this is the goal, but nwfp is an outlier. it makes me feel more confident that we are really measuring the opinion of people there as opposed to this being some sort of freaky point estimate error. belujistan is an allied outliers well. this should have gone with the first back, but looking specifically at al qaeda and the activities of bin laden, and

this is frame because many people do not know the word i al qaeda, but they know osama bin laden. you see a lot of interprovincial and variation. with belujistan being an outlyer, you are looking at variation among those who say it is a critical threat. the vast majority of folks think that al qaeda and bin laden are bad news. returning to the question of afghan-taliban bases in pakistan and whether or not the government to close down these basis, even if it requires the use of force, again you see pretty strong provincial variation. nwfp and the punjab as well as sindh are firmly of the belief that it should. one in three basically say that they should not. belujistan is really ambivalent,

and sindh is overwhelmingly supported that they should shut these guys down. al qaeda training camps in pakistan, we asked the same question. again we see a similar interprovincial variation. sindh is much more vocal than the other provinces. nwfp thinks the pakistani authorities should not shut them down. the breakdown here is similar to the question posed about the ttp. this is an interesting question. pippa has asked this question again in other countries. i think the motivation of this is that what they are trying to do is disaggregate what folks think -- you could certainly imagine that you support a tax on the united states and you support al qaeda's goals.

but al qaeda's goals are much more expensive than simply attacking the united states. it is also positive review possible you the share many of al qaeda's other goals but reject a tax on the united states. then there are those people who do not share the views of al qaeda and also oppose a tax on the united states. -- oppose attacks on united states. in the nwfp, contradictory to some of the findings we found in the other slides, and that a more likely to support attacking the u.s. and more like to share the attitudes of al qaeda towards the u.s.. belujistan opposed the tax of americans -- oppose the attacks

of americans. the violence that al qaeda seeks to perpetrate on the americans. turning to osama bin laden, over the years, when you see polls on pakistanis and their views and, it is difficult to get a solid trend line on what date think about bin laden. you see really interesting interprovincial variations. a slight majority in nwfp have a positive attitude, but there is considerable ambivalence. in the punjab you actually see the least level of active support or belief that bin laden is an ok guy. along with belujistan, you see the largest number of people within explicitly negative view of him.

you see more ambivalence going on. that is it on the interprovincial differences. thank you. >> good morning. when i was asked to participate, i said that i would not a big fan of public opinion polls. this grows out of my experience in college, polling regarding potato chips and highways. we simply manufactured the data in both cases, so i was very skeptical of the process. i find it important and useful in some ways, and looking at it from a policy perspective, unexpected ways. i think of once when i briefed bill casey about the first war

in afghanistan. the then head of the cia, and someone said in punjab they do not do this or that. he said, where is punjab? i thought, we have a problem if the director of the cia does not aware the punjab is. polling is generally is useful if it can serve as part of the educational process for policy makers. i particularly like chris's add- ons because it forces you to think about the differences between parts of pakistan. what i am deeply concerned about is the notion of pakistani public opinion. there is no pakistani public opinion except that which is being manufactured by the polling organizations. that gives us and the pakistan government something to talk about. to the degree that pakistan moves toward being a more participatory state, that is useful.

in the since the pakistan government may have to take account of some public opinion as defined by american pollsters. from the point of view of american policy-makers who often know nothing about a region or country, calling forces them to think a little bit or at least generalize about pakistan and the critical difference between provinces. my analogy in india, the attitudes of north and south indians are enormous. there are important regional differences in pakistan, and i really like chris's dated to bring out these differences. having done this, we simply sat

down and manufactured it. i know from my experience in india, a lot of the stuff is fabricated to suit the customer. that is what we were doing in fact. let me talk about a few policy implications, and then i will move on to questions. polls are an educational tool if you cannot get them to sit down and look at them, and especially if you could do them over time. what struck me about this poll is that the earlier numbers of no answers were much higher than the later ones. you have explained why, but i think that is a critical issue. pakistanis have been bombarded by propaganda of all sorts for generations, right from the beginning of the country.

this is a country that grew up on anti-americanism. you could buy the protocols of the elders of zion freely in the bazaars. a lot of this was state- sponsored. even recently, you had the government of pakistan accusing the indians and the americans of colluding against pakistan. it is a country that has been subjected to more than any other country i know to systematic brainwashing of its own population. that did not matter, in a sense, we did not care about policy. we did not care what pakistanis thought. american policy was disinterested in what the polls said because the people did not care. who knows who the people are? they do not vote, they did not wear uniforms, and they are not really our friends. the polling was irrelevant until

recently. now i think pakistan has sort of a democracy, or moving in the direction of a participatory system. the opinion of people does matter. we may be creating a pakistani identity through these polls. i am not sure if the pakistan government has any kind of mechanism for polling. i wonder if they have people like me doing their polls. i think this has changed now. there is a radical change in american attitudes towards pakistan. this began in the last year or two of the more recent bush administration. it was not simply what the military thought. it was what that pakistan people were thinking in where they are going. a realization occurred that pakistan could be and is now one of america's biggest foreign policy problems. it became the policy of

congress and there is a bill that epitomizes this concern about the future of pakistan as a skate -- as a state. public opinion polling is now more relevant, but again i caution policymakers about taking it too seriously. what would be useful would be if you could be construct these polls to look more carefully at age differential and class differential among those who respond. you might need a much larger sample. i am interested in what that 17, 19, and 20-year-old stink about the future of pakistan. -- think about the future of pakistan. how they see pakistan and america and the people who will be running pakistan 10 or 15 years from now?

how they view the future? i think it will be useful in the future to do some questions and ask about all the possible futures for themselves and their country. what do they see as the least and most desirable? polling -- that kind of question might give policymakers a better idea of what are the deepest concerns of pakistanis of all sorts, especially the young, decides whether or not they like the taliban. the anti-americanism is very deep and persistent. it would be useful if we could find out why, and which sectors to hold these views more intensely than others. frankly, i think american policy should not only address this question directly through much

greater expansion of libraries, exchanges, and so forth. when we come across people who are systemically lying about us for one reason or another, i think we should confront them as a matter of policy and not give them a free ride. challenge them publicly about what they say this or why they believe that. that is one of the fantasies that circulates among the highest levels of the pakistan military, that this retired colonel sitting in virginia somehow shapes american policy toward the destruction of pakistan, along with the indians in collusion. i think the polls will show that this is widely held among educated and influential pakistan's. we should go after these people and confront them with what we know to be falsehoods. we clearly have a huge weapon in our arsenal, president obama. my son writes about these kind

of things, how you monetize the value of an intangible asset. i would say the obama speech in cairo is at least $15 billion. we would have had to spend that kind of money to get that kind of result. the educated, influential pakistani is attune to these kind of messages from america, so we have this great weapon in our arsenal, and he should be used judiciously. clearly, his statement and those of other american leaders, these kind of direct actions are critically important and worth more than billions and billions of dollars. i am not sure if you can measure this in a poll, but from a policy point of view, they are worth pursuing.

do we need to worry about pakistan in terms of where public opinion is going in pakistan? yes, i think the administration is coming to the conclusion that is more important than afghanistan. what the pakistan people's think is going to be critically important for american foreign policy for the indefinite future. that is why this has to be from our point of view, not just a onetime effort. that gets us into other issues, but polling provides one window into the attitudes and minds of pakistanis.

>> thank you, paul. we will run for at least 20 or 25 minutes on questions and discussion. i know christine has an observation, and while you think about and prepare your thoughtful, brief question for the panel, i would like to just pose a simple question to our panelists. all these people have to go back to their office today and, and you will go back to your office. someone will ask for you were this morning. you will say at a presentation on public opinion in pakistan. you should be able to tell them one interesting or important thing that occurred to justify this 90 minutes. i would like to ask our panelists if they could help the audience with one thing that they found interesting or important from this public opinion research.

would anybody like to start? >> to all these folks who work in public diplomacy, you cannot change what pakistani stinted to you figure out what they think and why. -- what they think and why. we have to move away from the idea that pakistan is a coherent thing when everyone thinks alike. in the other survey, we are looking at age differences. we have a 6000-person sample. we look at gender, province, age. what you find is that use our help very differently across the country. public diplomacy popes have to figure out what they think, what sorts of information they consume, and stop thinking about one pakistan because there are multiple pakistans. >> to me, the thing i have gathered from this whole process is that many observers

and reporters of the pakistan he's seen over the last few months have said that there seems to have been a sea change in pakistan public opinion, and for good or ill, the tools of social science turn out to say the same thing. you are both modes of knowledge are wrong -- either both modes of knowledge are wrong, or they are both right. the other key thing for me is to understand that this greatly increased negativity and skepticism toward religious militant groups in the country does not bring with it any sort of automatic reinforcement of other attitudes that the u.s. would like to see for its

foreign policy reasons. this show we speak very clearly distinguished in people's minds -- this should be very clearly distinguish in people's minds. i think pakistan is evolving a new identity. there's a new idea of pakistan. that idea does not include any favorable attitudes toward the united states, except a "you give us this and we might do that" attitude. the polls are good, but they tell us about the past. they do offer some trends, if they are well done, and give us the deeper reasons for attitudes. it is important that we understand that pakistan may law in a way which we may not like. you may have a more coherent, organize pakistan, but one that rose up against american

concerns and interests. >> i share of the skepticism about polls in general. having gone through the enumerated training, i will not trust a poll where the enumerators have not been trained. i have some insights about how polling has shaped events in pakistan. my favorite story is iri. they collected a lot of data about the views of musharraf. they ask what are your views about the army. what you saw is that the public opinion about the army declined throughout 2007. they also asked, to what extent do you think less of the army because of president musharraf? the majority of people said that this was their view. musharraf was so angry about these polls, he actually said, you pollsters are destabilizing

the region. he went on and on and actually kicked out the chief of mission to iri. there is an interesting dialogue. dewpoint was absolutely spot on, the fact that you have folks who are collecting data on what pakistan is think. they feed into that the government. is a barometer -- as a barometer is important. >> thank you. one of our associates will bring you a microphone. >> thank you very much. it is a very interesting set of results. i have some questions about the questions that you asked, the

focus on the bases in pakistan struck me as not really focusing on where the real problem is. i do not know if there's some polling history that dictated that. the question on the goals of the taliban was it by neary. either take over all of pakistan or up only the nwfp. there are a lot of other possibilities. it seems to me there is an interesting timing question you did not mention that may help explain a lot of your results. that is that this happened 10 days after the government's highly visible decision to go in militarily in swat. to me, that probably sets up a situation where you have the maximum and popularity of the taliban. i was struck by the fact that the taliban were unpopular everywhere, it was just a question of how much and how intensely. it struck me also that that might explain this otherwise is are finding in the nwfp about

having high confidence in the government and army to handle things. this may have been the wish being farther than you thought. i wonder about the answer to that in august if the displaced people are still away from home. >> in response or observations about that? >> i think the timing of this is really important. especially when you look at their findings compared to what i found in march before all this took place. i suspect that is actually driving it. i also share concerns about the idp situation. i am understanding is there are more in people's homes than in the camps. when i was there during the enumerated training, there was already a lot of displaced persons.

the concern that folks evidenced during the meetings was that the pashtuns have different values and are more religious than they are. in april, pakistanis were already registering concerns about what the impact would be on the idp's throughout pakistan. many drew parallels to the afghan refugees during the 1980's. my colleagues and i are doing our 6000 person survey. we were interested in what people think about their future, not just the past. we are interested in doing service to follow up on this. i am pretty sure iri is also doing surveys. >> thank you very much for an excellent report.

i have been a professor of demography and theology for more than 10 years. i am working on a world muslim demography project. i agree with most of the remarks, because i work in the field, so i know a lot of the problems that have happened. i am from sindh. i lived there many years. the observations you have for sindh are very striking. i have problems with the way the data were collected. 50% of the population lives in urban areas. there are a lot of pashtun speaking people, so maybe they

are overly represented. 95% are with the present government', so that could have affected the results. is a difficult place to do interviews. most of the people do not want to permit 81 into their homes. they will not answer questions. -- do not want to permit anyone into their homes. that is one observation i had. i cannot believe that 96% of the people in sindh would be in favor of al qaeda, or a very