Upbeat poll on life in Afghanistan must have been compiled in a parallel universe

There is a brave new Afghanistan out there, where people love their government, are hopeful about the future, and are enthusiastic about the presence of foreign forces on their soil.

It sounds like a great place. I’d like to go sometime. But the pollsters who compiled the ABC/BBC/ARD survey on Afghanistan released last week must have been in some parallel universe, one that bears little resemblance to the country of the same name in which I’ve been living for the past five years.

If the figures are correct, then over 1,000 of the 1,543 people polled are optimistic about their future. I have been in Afghanistan for over five years, have spoken with thousands of people, and I have not found even one.

In my Afghanistan people are depressed and angry, half of the country is now a no-go area, little girls are given in marriage to 40-year-old men, and boys join the Taliban because it provides an exciting alternative to their drab existences.

I have good friends, educated, young, modern Afghans, who applauded when a Helmandi soldier picked up a machine gun and mowed down six British soldiers, such is the antipathy to the foreign military presence.

Five journalists I trained are now in hiding — some from the Taliban, some from warlords, some from the government. One has been killed; several others have fled the country. Freedom of the press is still touted as one of the major achievements of the Karzai government.

It could be the methodology, or the analysis, or the vagaries of trying to get people here to give you an honest opinion. Afghans handle truth very carefully, and dole it out in miniscule portions. Ask an Afghan how much salary he makes, and he will adjust up or down by a factor of three, depending on whether you are a tax inspector, a former colleague whose envy he is trying to provoke, or a relative who might be asking for a loan.

Afghanistan is hardly unique; I spent a great deal of time in the Soviet Union, and then Russia, and public opinion polls in the early days were very much the same thing — an exercise in futility. I still remember a comedy sketch by the legendary Arkady Raikin, whom I saw in concert sometime in the late 1980s. He was miming a marketing survey, a very new concept in those fragile years when the State’s iron grip was just beginning to relax.

“How many spoonfuls of sugar do you use in your tea?” asks the pollster. Raikin squints suspiciously. “How many am I supposed to use?” he asks. “There is no right or wrong answer, just answer truthfully,” says the puzzled surveyor. “I use the correct amount, no more, no less,” says the wily Raikin. After 20 minutes or so, the interviewer departs, none the wiser.

Asking Afghans how they feel about their government, or the Taliban, or the warlords, is much the same. “I feel the way I am supposed to feel,” will be the veiled answer. The interviewee has no real understanding of how this information is going to be used — he just wants to avoid difficulty.

This is supposing that the interviews were actually conducted, and not concocted by the researchers in the privacy of their own homes. Surveyors are paid by the interview; many of them work in areas that are so insecure that there is little chance that an inspector from the parent agency will be able to check up on them. Afghanistan did not gain its place as second most corrupt nation on earth in Transparency International’s annual index by being overly scrupulous on details. I know that the polling agency, Acsor, insists that it conducts rigorous quality control, but it also wants to convince us that over 60 percent of Afghans think that women’s rights are pretty good, overall.

I cannot, like the White Queen, manage to believe six impossible things before breakfast. It will take much more than a widely promoted opinion poll to get me through this particular looking glass.

http://www.globalpost.com/notebook/afghanistan/100118/afghanistan-parallel-universe