Are Afghans really happy?

Western media talk of soaring optimism in Afghanistan. Afghans, when pressed, beg to differ.

Jean MacKenzieJanuary 23, 2010 13:57Updated May 30, 2010 12:19

An Afghan girl runs in front of U.S. Marines from India Company, 3rd Battalion 4th Marines, as they patrol at Delaram district in Nimroz province, southern Afghanistan, Jan. 19, 2010. (Marko Djurica/Reuters)

KABUL, Afghanistan — There is a loud sound of head-scratching in Kabul these days as Afghans and foreigners alike ponder the results of a poll conducted jointly by ABC News, the BBC and German television company ARD.

According to the survey, 70 percent of Afghans believe their country is going in the right direction. A similar number have faith in their government, support the presence of the foreign troops and say that their living situation is generally pretty good.

But the prevailing mood in the country does not seem to support the published results.

“It is a big mistake to believe in that BBC poll,” said Rahimullah Samander, head of the Center for International Journalism. “Things are getting worse day by day.”

His view is echoed by journalists, researchers, and ordinary Afghans around the country.

“I think they mixed up the numbers,” laughed a young journalist from Khost province. “They got the positives and negatives backwards. It should have been 70 percent of the people think the country is going in the wrong direction. When they say that only 6 percent of the people prefer the Taliban to the government, they really meant it the other way around.”

The poll was conducted by Acsor, a public opinion research organization that has been active in Afghanistan since 2003. The managing director, Matthew Warshaw, stands by his figures, albeit with some caveats.

“’Right direction’ does not mean that everything is OK in Afghanistan,” he said in an interview with Global Post. “It just means that things are shifting in a more positive way.”

One of the major factors contributing to the new optimism, said Warshaw, was the successful resolution of the presidential elections in the fall.

Many observers would not have called the fraud-plagued, conflict-ridden spectacle of the Afghan presidential poll a “success,” but Warshaw insists that Afghans have a fairly low threshold.

“There was no civil war, the elections did not end in violence,” he said. “This (poll) is about their interpretation of what is good.”

But even within the poll itself there were glaring inconsistencies. While more than 70 percent of Afghans express confidence in their government, more than 90 percent say that the government is highly corrupt.

Back to that low threshold again.

“I have heard (Afghans) say ‘better the criminals that we know,’ ” said Warshaw. “These guys have already put the money in their pockets. The new guys would have to do the same thing before they could get started.”

The poll is being widely promoted as a sign that Afghanistan has turned a corner; it is also, perhaps, a way of boosting flagging support for the erstwhile “Good War.” ABC Nightly News anchor Diane Sawyer came to Kabul as the poll results were announced, and the BBC sent veteran reporter Alan Little to Herat to probe the city’s success stories. German newspapers ran the story of the poll under the headline “Hope has returned.”

But while Western news outlets broadcast the soaring optimism in Afghanistan, those actually in the country are having none of it.