Man, remember the old days when political scientists complained that there was no public opinion survey data in the Middle East? No more. Jordan's Center for Strategic Studies has just released yet another survey, this one focused on attitudes towards terrorism following the Amman hotel bombings. The key findings (Jordan Times link should be good for a week or so; al-Ghad link in Arabic):
- The percentage of respondents who consider Al Qaeda (bin Laden) a legitimate resistance group dropped from 66.8 per cent in 2004 to 20 per cent in December 2005.
- 72.2 per cent of the polled national sample consider Al Qaeda in Iraq (Zarqawi) to be a terrorist organisation, while only 6.2 per cent said it was a legitimate resistance movement.
Going into the internals reveals something extremely interesting, though, which strongly supports the "Zarqawi vs Zawahiri" argument I've been making the last few months: among "opinion leaders", bin Laden's Al Qaeda (73.4 per cent) and Zarqawi's Al Qaeda (84.6 per cent) were overwhelmingly now seen as terrorist organisations. But only half (48.9%) of the national sample respondents considered Bin Laden's Al Qaeda to be a terrorist organisation, while around three quarters of respondents described Zarqawi's Al Qaeda a terrorist group. (Support for Hamas and Hizbollah remains high, though a smidge lower.) 92% of opinion leaders view the subway bombings in London as terrorism, 95% see Sharm El Sheikh attacks as terrorism, 96% see the Amman hotel bombings as acts of terrorism. 63% of national sample respondents view the London bombings as terrorist acts, 77.4 per cent, view Sharm El Sheikh blasts as terrorist and 94% find the Amman attacks as terrorist.
Other interesting findings:
- In 2004, 90 per cent of respondents considered the killing of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza by Israel to be a “terrorist” act. This opinion did not change in 2005.
- When it comes to Israeli assassination of Palestinian political leaders in the West Bank and Gaza, 84 per cent in 2004 and 88.7 per cent of respondents in 2005 considered the acts to be “terrorist.”
- 86.3 per cent of respondents in 2004 and 78.3 per cent in 2005 regard US-led armed operations in Iraq as “terrorist” acts. 87 per cent of opinion leaders do consider the US-led armed operations in Iraq a “terrorist” act.
- With regard to armed military operations carried out against US troops in Iraq, the majority of Jordanians, or 68.8 per cent in 2004 and 63.6 per cent in 2005, termed the attacks as “not terrorist.” 82.8 per cent of opinion leaders said they consider armed military operations against the US-led allied forces in Iraq to be non-terrorist acts.
In other words, condemnation of Zarqawi is not translating into significant changes in the mass public with regard to attitudes towards Iraq or Israel. Where "opinion leaders" are largely equating Zarqawi and bin Laden, see attacks in London as similar to attacks in Egypt or Amman, and buy into the King's war against a general jihadist ideology, far fewer of the mass public is doing so. According to this survey, almost all Jordanians are enraged at Zarqawi for the hotel bombing atrocity - but considerably fewer are translating this into condemnation of al-Qaeda Central. Just as in the Palestinian poll I reported earlier this week, this new CSS poll suggests that the US should not automatically assume that Zarqawi's atrocities will alone turn the tide in its favor.
Braizat is a good guy. Yoeman work. I tried to introduce him to US Gov several years ago when he needed financing for a mass survey, they were uninterested.
Posted by: collounsbury | January 05, 2006 at 12:00 PM