Gathering of Eagles

Iraqis
regard their safety, well-being, and prospects as substantially
improved compared to last summer (when the surge was in progress), and
last spring (when it was just beginning), according to a newly released
poll of 2,228 Iraqis conducted by D3 Systems and KA Research, Ltd. on behalf of a consortium of new organizations, including ABC News and the BBC News.

Americans
read Iraqi polls in terms of how much “they” like “us.” And in this
context, it is pleasing to note that we are uniformly more liked, or
less hated, by Iraqis of all regions and sects, according to the
consortium’s post-surge survey. But the purpose of American polity in
Iraq is not to poll the “Arab street,” but to structure that street so
that its opinion matters. A more instructive approach, therefore,
focuses on how Iraqis regard the structures of their new democracy.

Taken
February 12-20, 2008, this was the first major post-surge survey of
Iraqis. Its scope and methodology are comparable to polls that the
ABC/BBC consortium commissioned in March and August of 2007.

Compared
to last summer, the percentage of Iraqis who regard their own security
as good has risen 19 points, from 43 percent to 62 percent. The
percentage of persons who describe their own life as “going well” has
risen 16 points, from 39 percent to 55 percent. Sixty-five percent of
Iraqis now describe the availability of household necessities as good,
compared to 39 percent last summer.

In
August 2007, Iraqis expecting things to get worse over the next year
outnumbered those expecting things to get better by a margin of 39
percent to 29 percent. Since then, civilian casualties have fallen by
60 percent. In the post-surge survey, the optimists out-polled the
pessimists, 45 percent to 19 percent.

The optimism reported in
the survey is particularly impressive given its methodology. The
ABC/BBC consortium sample contains 30 percent Sunni Arabs. This
“sample” stands in marked contrast to population estimates by the
Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress and the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency. The latter estimates that Sunni Arabs
comprise 12 percent to 22 percent of Iraq’s population.

The
decision to exclude religion and ethnic weighting to a sample of Iraqis
that is 30 percent Sunni Arab has put the ABC/BBC survey series at odds
with other major Iraq pollsters, notably Oxford Research Group and
Opinion Research Business. The decision seems particularly odd, given
the fulsome coverage afforded the Sunni refugee crisis by both ABC and
BBC — the flight of several million Sunni Arabs to Jordan, Syria, and
other nations following the overthrow of Saddam.

The
result has been a series of ABC/BBC polls substantially more
pessimistic than others of equal scope. Sunni Arab tribes controlled
most things under the Baathists; Sunni Arabs had the most to lose when
the regime was overthrown. They have suffered from the invasion itself,
from the inevitable Shiite/Kurd ascendancy, and from the brutal
“anti-collaboration” machinations of al-Qaeda. Their polled opinions
reflect this experience.

An
example of the influence of the consortium’s liberal estimate of Sunni
Arab population is as follows. The ABC/BBC poll reported last spring
that by a 51 percent to 49 percent margin, Iraqis considered attacks on
coalition troops “acceptable.” This finding was derived from three
components: Sunnis, who “accepted” such attacks by 93 percent to 6
percent; Shiites, who rejected such attacks 65 percent to 35 percent;
and Kurds, who opposed anti-coalition violence 93 percent to 7 percent.
Only the double-weight of Sunnis in the sample allowed news
organizations to report (as many did) that most Iraqis approved
anti-coalition violence.

In
the current survey, Iraqis overall oppose such attacks 57 percent to 42
percent. The percentage of Sunnis who find anti-coalition violence
unacceptable has increased from 6 percent to 37 percent. But once
again, the double weight given to the 62 percent of Sunnis who continue
to approve of anti-coalition violence — at least in the abstract —
attenuates the reported improvement in relations between Iraqis and the
coalition.

Do Iraqis love us? No.
The Multi-National Force (MNF) is an army of occupation, and 99 percent
of Iraqis polled want it to leave. They just don’t want it to leave
anytime soon.

Fifty-nine
percent of those polled want coalition troops to stay until security is
restored, the government is stable, and/or the Iraqi security forces
are stronger, while another 4 percent wanted Coalition troops to stay
indefinitely. Support for a continued MNF presence increased among both
Shiites and Sunnis.

There are some specific reasons why Iraqis, who do not love us, want us to hang around:

66 percent want our security assistance “in terms of Turkey”;

68 percent want our security assistance “in terms of Iran”;

73 percent want our help in reconstruction;

76 percent want our help in training and equipping the Iraqi army; and

80 percent want us “participating in security operations against al-Qaeda or foreign Jihadis in Iraq.”

The
important results of this poll relate not to how Iraqis regard us, but
to how they regard the institutions we have mentored, and the
reconciliation we are fostering. Here are some of the consortium’s
post-surge findings:

Attitude toward a “Unified Iraq, with one central government in Baghdad”: 66 percent positive, up 8 percent since last spring;

Confidence in Iraqi national army: 65 percent, up 4 percent since last spring;

Confidence in Iraqi police: 67 percent, up 3 percent since last spring;

Confidence in local militia groups: 22 percent, down 14 percent since last spring;

Confidence in the anti-al-Qaeda “Awakening Groups” among Sunni Arabs: 73 percent;

Confidence in the anti-al-Qaeda “Awakening Groups” among Shi’ite Arabs: 60 percent;

Overall
support for allowing former mid- and low-level Baathists to take
government jobs: 69 percent, up from 56 percent last spring;

Shiite
support for allowing former mid- and low-level Baathists to take
government jobs: 63 percent, up from 35 percent last spring;

Support for the right of previous residents to re-occupy homes expropriated during the insurgency: 88 percent;

Opposition to the separation of Iraqis along religious or ethnic lines: 92 percent.

In short, cohesion is in, jihad is out; the new institutions are gaining popular support.

The
Western fascination with the vagaries of the Arab street has been
misplaced due to the totalitarian nature of most Middle Eastern
societies. The Coalition’s challenge is to create power structures in
which the “Arab street” finally matters. This implies the destruction
of the masks through which Arab opinion has been filtered in the 20th
century: Marxism, pan-Arab nationalism, and jihadism.

The end game is not for “us” to help “them,” but for them to effectively help themselves.

— Richard Nadler is president of the Americas Majority Foundation.