‘Slim support for fighting militants’
Foreign Desk Report

WASHINGTON—Islamabad’s fight against Islamic militants has only weak support among Pakistanis, who also strongly oppose allowing outside forces to fight al Qaeda in Pakistan, according to a poll released on Wednesday. The WorldPublicOpinion.org poll conducted last month, before a suicide bombing in Karachi killed 139 people following former Prime Minster Benazir Bhutto’s return from exile, also showed scant support for President Pervez Musharraf, a key ally of the United States.
The poll of 907 Pakistanis in urban areas found that 44 percent favor sending the Pakistani army to northwestern tribal areas to pursue and capture al Qaeda militants, while 48 percent support allowing the Pakistan army to fight Taliban insurgents who have crossed over from Afghanistan. About one-third of respondents opposed military action in those two cases and a fifth declined to answer, the poll showed.
An overwhelming 80 percent of respondents voiced opposition to allowing U.S. or other foreign troops to attack al Qaeda on Pakistani territory. Seventy-seven percent opposed allowing foreign troops to attack Taliban insurgents based in Pakistan, the poll showed. Only 5 percent said they approved of missions by foreign troops to pursue Taliban or al Qaeda. Both militant groups are believed to have regrouped in border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan after they were ousted from power in Afghanistan in late 2001.
Among urban Pakistanis asked to name “the best person to lead Pakistan” 27 percent named Bhutto, 21 percent cited Musharraf and 21 percent supported former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who remains in exile after an abortive attempt to return home last month. “The Pakistani people are not enthusiastic about Musharraf, do not support his recent crackdown on fundamentalists, and are lukewarm at best about going after al Qaeda or the Taliban in western Pakistan,” said WorldPublicOpinion.org director Steven Kull. “It appears that a US strategy that rests on Musharraf being a front line in the war on terrorism has poor prospects,” he said in a statement accompanying the poll.
Strict U.S. controls over equipment and a failure to provide other equipment, such as spare parts, has impeded Pakistan’s ability to hunt down Taliban and al-Qaeda, Washington Post says in its Wednesday edition Five years ago, elite Pakistani troops stationed near the border with Afghanistan began receiving hundreds of pairs of U.S.-made night-vision goggles that would enable them to see and fight al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents in the dark. The sophisticated goggles, supplied by the Bush administration at a cost of up to $9,000 a pair, came with an implicit message: Step up the attacks.