aerial drones by the u.s. military inside pakistan. more now on a survey from a group called world public opinion. this is about an hour and a half. >> and what it means for pakistan and u.s. policies. my name is stephen weber. i am with the program on international policy attitudes, and we manage world public opinion.org. this is a network of organizations around the world that conduct research on international policy questions, and this study, along with all of our other work can be found on our website, worldpublicopinion.org, along with documentation method,

frequency of distribution and so forth. we have studies on pakistan and southeast asia that can be found there as well. this morning we will be looking at findings from a national survey of the people of pakistan that was connected in late may, slightly over a month ago. the specific dates were may 17-28. to put this in an american context, this was four months after president obama was inaugurated and about one week before his speech in cairo in which he addressed it is muslim world. clay ramsey on my right will present the findings on a set of issues, including the public's views of the conflict in the swat valley and of the pakistani taliban, also attitudes about the war in afghanistan and at tudes about the role of the u.s. in the region. clay is director of research and has worked extensively of

studies of public opinion in south asia, and recently a study of attitudes about the conflict in kashmir. christine will present some particularly interesting regional differences on pakistani attitudes. pakistani's ethnic mitchell is crucial in understanding his politics and relation to neighbors. we will understand it is important to understanding attitudes to the uniformity and the taliban as well. christine is a specialist in south asia. she has traveled. to afghanistan and pakistan. currently she is a currently political scientist at the rand corporation and previously was at the u.s. institute of peace. some of her ideas went into the development of the questionnaire for this study. and finally, steven is a senior

fellow in foreign policy development at the brookings institution. he has co-authored books on southeast asia. he has had an exceptional career as an academic and on the policy planning staff at the state department. he will talk to us about policy issues he finds. i would like clay to start out and present the core findings of the research. >> thank you all very much for coming. this survey was conducted over may 17th to the 28th, and there were 1,000 pakistani adults nationwide responding. interviews were conducted at home in randomly selected urban and rural sampling points in all four provinces. let me add quickly that for

balukistan, which has only about 5% of the country, we oversampled and then weighted the results back down so that they would be proportional to the rest of the country. the margin of error is plus or minus 3.2%. these are the topics i will cover, which steve has already run through for you. the swat valley conflict, the war in afghanistan, attitudes toward president obama and the u.s., and al qaeda. so, a major shift has taken place in pakistani's perceptions of religious militant groups in their country. 81% now see the activities of islammist militants and taliban in the fatah and central areas as a critical threat to pakistan, while in the fall of 2007 when we asked the same

question, only 34% saw them as critical. more broadly, the activities of religious militant groups in pakistan as a whole are seen as a critical threat by 2/3, up from 38%. when they were asked where their sympathies lie in the swat conflict, seven in 10 are supportive of the government. 10% volunteered on the fence response, both equally or neither. but only 5% said the pakistani taliban. confidence in the pakistani government and army to handle the situation is at majority levels. of confidence, and seven in 10 say they have at least some. the public seems definite that the pakistani taliban represents a road they don't want their done to go down.

we asked them to think what if the pakistani taliban were to gain control over all of pakistan? how would this be? and 75% called this bad. 67% said it would be very bad. at the same time, a majority see such a takeover of the whole country as unlikely. about half say it is very unlikely. we asked people whether they thought the pakistani taliban actually has the ambition of taking over the whole country and imposing its form of government, or whether it just means to run the northwest, which is a sizable goal in sit evans. a bare majority of 51% thinks the taliban is focused on the northwest, but 36% disagrees and thinks its ambitions are

national. some feel that the government was still right to attempt to compromise. we reminded them that government forces agreed to withdraw and agreed to let them establish a system in swat while the taliban agreed to withdraw and put down weapons. a plural a lot said they made the right greem. just before the agreement in march, a poll by the international represent institute found 72% then supporting a peace deal. further, the public has judged that the pakistani taliban definitely broke the agreement by its actions. when they were asked do you think that sending their forces into more areas beyond swat violated or didn't violate the agreement, 2/3 said yes, this was a violation.

a large majority does not even think the pakistani taliban would submit themselves to the jurisdiction of the saria courts they were demanding. 71% think the pakistani taliban will not accept the courts having the power to try taliban members. this may seem a small point, but it can be important for how militant groups are perceived in the future, because the willingness to accept a rule for yourself if you want to impose it on others is often basic to people's perception of fairness. there is a big divide between the majorities of view of some aspects of saria and the pakistani taliban's view is. so, are women allowed to work?

75% said yes. will the pakistani taliban allow women to work in areas they control? 881% said no. are girls allowed to go to work? 83% said yes. will the pakistani taliban allow girls to go to school? 80% said no. very few think the pakistani taliban has the compe continues to govern and deliver goods, but this does not mean they have faith in the government's competence. people were asked which would do a better job in three areas. what about providing effectsive and timely justice in the courts? only 14% think the pakistani taliban would do a better job. a majority, 56%, think the government would, but 26% opted out and said both or neither. preventing corruption in government. just 9% prefer the taliban, but fewer than half, 47% prefer the government.

a large 38% say both or neither. helping the poor. 7% said the taliban, 44% the government, and another 44% said both or neither. so since we see this shift of attitudes about the pakistani taliban, does this change carry over to the use of the afghan taliban? and if so, to what degree? >> nearly all pakistanis say that in principal, the afghan taliban should not be allowed to have bases in pakistan. 87% thought this. at the same time, many pakistanis seem unwilling to face the prospect that the afghan tal bad to operate from sanctuary bases on the pakistani side of the border. 77% said taliban groups trying to overthrow the government in

afghanistan do not operate from pakistan. they do follow their government if it were to take the lead in clarifying the issue. asked if the pakistani government were to identify bases in pakistan of taliban groups trying to overthrow the afghan government, do you think the government should or should not overthree these bases even if it requires the use of military force? 78% said the government should close thee bases, only 13% disagree. this shows a considerable growth in support for pakistan to secure its western border. but this support was not at majority levels then. if the afghan taliban were to succeed in its goal and take

over afghanistan, three in five pakistanis would see this as a negative outcome. 61% said if the taliban were to regain power in afghanistan, this would be bad. 54% called it very bad. 24% said this would be a good outcome, and another 10% volunteered it would be neither good nor bad. when the united states is brought into the picture, this overlay gives rise to some very different attitudes. ask about the curent u.s. drone aircraft attacks that strike targets in northwest pakistan, 82% called them unjustified. only 13% disagreed. if the u.s. were to identify afghan taliban bases in pakistan, 79% say it would not be justified in bombing them, though this action is supported now when carried out by pakistan's own government.

we asked a question that would remind respondents that the international community originated the military presence in afghanistan. it read, the u.n. has authorized a nate dash nato mission. this mission is meant to have the government defend itself from taliban insurgence. do you approve? >> 72% disapprove of the nato movement. 18% approve. >> do you think it should be continued or ended now? >> and 9% said it should be ended now, 13% that it should continue. the recent decision by the obama administration to send up to 17,000 more u.s. troops to afghanistan this year is widely rejected in pakistan. 86% said they disapproved.

so, there are few signs of a washover of public support. but to the free that the war in afghanistan is brought on to pakistani soil by either side, there is a strong public reaction. let's look now at whether the arrival of obama has brought any signs of warmer attitudes towards the u.s.? i should say this poll was conducted just before the president's speech in cairo. he did briefly mention the war in afghanistan and u.s. plans for economic and humanitarian aid in pakistan. asked how much confidence they have in president obama to do the right thing regarding world affairs, a 62% majority have low confidence in him. 41% said none at all. 30% expressed some or a lot of confidence.

now when asked the same question about president bush in 2008, it found even fewer expressing confidence, 7%, but you have the same number, 61%, expressing low confidence. so more pakistanis express confidence in obama than did in president bush. but the majority expressing a lack of confidence in a u.s. president is really the same as before. we asked pakistanis to consider what president obama's policies may mean for their country. 32% said the policies of barack obama will be per for pakistan. 36% said they would be worse. and 26% said they will be about the same. so three in five think obama's policies will mean things will stay as they are or perhaps get worse. now, 69% feel unfavorably toward the current u.s.

government, and 58% are very unfavorable. only 27% have a positive view. this is roughly similar to responses in 2008 when 56% were unfavorable and 17% favorable. attitudes are a little less lopsided when pakistanis think about the u.s.'s efforts to promote international law. this question, which we have asked before has shown some signs of moderation. respondents chose between two statements. on the right you see the u.s. has been an important leader in promoting international laws and sets a good example by following them, or the u.s. tries to promote international laws for other countries but is hypocritical and is it not follow these rules himself. 2/3 took the critical view of the u.s. this is down from 78% in 2008. and a significance minority

chose a statement which praises the u.s. the u.s. per seefed as showing a disrespect for muss home run countries that they think is purposesful. a substantial one in three say this is not intentional. the u.s. is often disrespectful to the islamic world but out of ignorance and insensitivity. however, a 55% majority thought that the u.s. purposesly tries to humiliate the islamic world. this reaction of the u.s. towards muslim countries seems pretty entrenched. but if broader attitudes towards the united states have shown little improvement, what about attitudes towards al qaeda, the u.s.'s adversary.

there has been a shift in opinion towards al qaeda so far as it regards pakistan itself. in late 2007, if you look at the bottom bar, 41% shaw al qaeda's activities as a critical threat to the vital interests of pakistan in the next 10 years. in the current studies, 82% called them a critical threat to pakistan. so this doubled. an overwhelming majority thinks al qaeda should not be allowed to run training camps in pakistan. 88% said this. however, most say al qaeda is not operating training camps in pakistan. 76% thought this is not the case. nonetheless, if the pakistani government were to identify al qaeda training camps in the country, 74% said the government should close them down even if it requires use of

military force. 17% disagreed. this shows a shift in attitudes from 18 months ago. for comparison, in our 2007 poll, just a 44% plurality then favored the pakistani army entering areas to capture fighters, while 36% were opposed. even if the u.s. were to identify al qaeda training camps operating in pakistan, four in five pakistanis do not think it would be justified for the u.s. to bomb such camps. 81% rejected this. similarly, back in 2007, 80% said the pakistan government should not allow american or other foreign troops into pakistan to pursue and capture al qaeda fighters. on 5% thought their government should permanent it.

pakistanis views have changed a lot where their own government's actions are concerned. but where u.s. actions are concerned, pakistanis' views have barely changed. one way of understanding all this may be we are seeing a rising of pakistani national feeling directed at both extremist grooms within the country that are increasingly seen as harming the integrity of the state and against outside forces that are always seen as harming the integrity of the state. many in the public see the pakistani taliban, the afghan altan, the u.s. as all harming pakistan's state integrity. though the image of the u.s. does not benefit from this shift and rise in national awareness, overall, i think this change should still be welcome to the u.s. >> thank you.

christine will take another slice at these data. >> when you hit the button, it makes them appear. >> that is so complicated. so, let me give you a brief overview of what we are trying to do with this next presentation. this next presentation tries to disaggregate what pakistan looks like. the preceding pretation looked at the country overall. we tried to kinds of aggragation of the data. the first aggravation we looked at was urban-rural. we didn't find a lot of variation. so we are presenting here interpro vention differences. i think it is important to say up front, in pakistan there is often more variation within a

province than between provinces. the only way we can look at that is through a regregs model and that is obviously not something we are doing here. another caveat is this sample size was only 1,000, and it was drawn to be nationally representative. so we are very cautious in presenting interprovincial differences because the sample was not drawn at the provincial level. we are talking about statistics that we feel are significant. you can assume that if we don't have a specific slide addressing the previous variables that clay presented, there was no significance difference or at least a difference we felt confident in sharing with you. i want to oipt out that in this round of survey, they used a different firm. i have another survey i am doing at princeton and stanford

that use the same firm, and we are using 6,000 people. some of the interprovincial differences we point out here we are going to be thracking. before they signed up with this firm to do the survey, jacob and i actually we want to pakistan to do enumerator training. one of the most interesting things we found when we did the enumerator training, and i mean those people that are going out to interview the participants in the survey, we went through every single question in minute detail, and we questioned them very rigorously to make sure the enumerators understood the question. we understood in our previous sample in 2007, a lot of respondents said they did not want to respond. trying to figure out whether they don't know or didn't want

to respond is an important issue. so we spent time making sure the enumerators understood the terminology. when you actually ask people do you know what al qaeda is, most of the enumerators, who were very well educated, all of them have the 10 plus two, almost all of them hat b.a.'s, and almost all of them had five or more years experience doing direct marketing or our survey work. they were well educated, and they could not tell us what al qaeda was. al qaeda is osama bin laden's organization. one of the funniest things that came out of the training, when we were training one of the teams, we asked can you tell us what al qaeda is, and a woman raised her hand. this is funny, because they

almost never know. she explained that al qaeda was hamad, car decide's organization. we spent a lot of time making sure that they actually know what al qaeda is. there are many more anecdotes. each some people couldn't give a coherent explanation of what the taliban was. we have to be careful about the translation and that folks understand them. we have a caveat in mind that we understand the interprings differences. if you look at a map, you have ethnic pockets, -- it is only about 5% of the population and the biggest territory. in statistical sampling, this is like a lumpy soup. if you want to get an idea of what it tastes like, you have

to take bites all over the soup. we don't know whether the results we were saying is a product of the lumpy soup probe or a different result. we are going to see it is generally an outliar, and we will be tracking this in the 6,000-person survey. i am going to precept two baskets of attitudes. the first is about pakistani's threat perception and assessment. the second basket is about attitudes towards american policy, leadership and so forth. turning to the threat assessments, and this is a slide you have already seen. we asked them whether they perceived a threat or not. this particular slide looks at the activities of islammist militants and taliban in settled areas, and this is what we find. we are looking at critical threat, important but not critical and not a three. look at the differences you see

between nwfp and punjab. i think there is probably a fairly straight forward exchange if we can assume that these physician are reflecting an attitude as opposed to the lumpy soup problem. the violence in this area is really about ethnic violence. you haven't really seen the taliban act tiff there. my dog doesn't soil her kennel. maybe the afghan taliban are clever that they are not going to make a problem there. but you had much more islammist violence across the other three provinces. maybe that explains why it is really an outlier here. we asked pakistanis about the activities of religious militant groups in pakistan as a whole. again, you see really

interesting provincial dependings. the folks in the nbp and the punjab most concerned. when they began a campaign of suicide bombings, they are concentrated in punjab and other places. they have really been spared the rafpblgs of this kind of violence and you see this reflected in the interprovincial differences. going back to the pakistan taliban goals. we asked them if the pakistan taliban were to take over all of pakistan, how would this outcome be, ranging from very good to very bad. it is fascinating with the interprovincial differences.

the people who have been most fearkted by the activities of the taliban in pakistan, they are much more worried and apprehensive. and again, baluchistan which has been spared -- people who know about the t.p.p. know their outsources of violence are actually some of the second taryne grooms. the two provinces who have born the brunt of the violence are more apprehensive about the outcome of a takeover. we asked folks about back santana taliban's goals. i am not going to read the question. you can read it for yourself. fascinating interprovincial differences. even though folks in those areas, they have born the brunt of this violence, they are much more likely to bel