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| Afghanistan/South Asia |
| Afghan Opinion Poll: 2/3 of Population Supports US Removal of Taliban |
| 2004-07-14 |
| From Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty Two-thirds of Afghans polled in a recent survey say they hold out hope for the future of the country despite pressing worries about the security situation, pollsters announced on 13 July. Commissioned by the U.S.-based Asia Foundation, the survey's findings also suggest that a majority of Afghans support Afghan Transitional Administration Chairman Hamid Karzai, AP reported the same day. Some 13 percent of those Afghans polled voiced support for the ousted Taliban regime, according to the pollsters, who said two-thirds of Afghans approved of the U.S. move to unseat that hard-line Islamic regime in October 2001. Pollsters interviewed 804 rural and urban Afghans from 22 February to 13 March. Interviewers failed to conduct the survey in four of 34 Afghan provinces, including the Taliban stronghold of Uruzgan, where poor security persists. The study's margin of error is 3.5 percentage points. In the survey, 37 percent of respondents listed security as the greatest "national" concern; 29 percent listed the economy as the most serious problem in the country. |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |