Iraqis Less Doubtful about Future than U.S. Media

Over at National Review, Richard Nadler reports the results of a comprehensive poll of Iraqis. They don't see things as negatively as the American press it seems:

The International Republican Institute’s “Survey of Iraqi Public Opinion,” released July 19, 2006, provides a useful reality check to these assumptions. The survey records that Iraqis overwhelmingly reject sectarianism and national division; and that they widely support the government they have elected. Moreover, most Iraqis feel safe in their own neighborhoods.

The poll is the latest addition to a series that the Institute has sponsored for the past three years. The surveys were conducted June 14 through June 24 this year—a time of high sectarian violence, particularly in the Baghdad area. The pollsters conducted 2849 interviews in Arabic and Kurdish, balanced for geography, ethnicity, sex, and age.

The February 22 bombing of the al-Askari shrine marked a turning point for the insurgency in Iraq. Al-Qaeda in Iraq, led at the time by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, implemented a long-discussed plan to target Shiite civilian and religious targets. The object was not to kill all Shiites—an obvious impossibility—but to generate a cycle of revenge killings by Shiite militias and police that would alienate and radicalize the Sunni populations in the most integrated parts of the country, particularly Baghdad.

In effect, Zarqawi chose to feed the anti-democracy insurgency in Iraq by narrowing its base. This paid immediate tactical dividends in both the Western and pan-Arab press, which covered the daily slaughters. But it was strategically counterproductive to al-Qaeda. The movement alienated ever-growing segments of the Iraqi population, and even of the insurgency, driving them toward the new government rather than away from it.

The current survey reflects these developments.

The Sunni sectarianism Zarqawi hoped to feed is alive and well. But the opposition to sectarianism is stronger than ever. Ninety-four percent of Iraqis support a “unity” government, representing all religious and ethnic communities, as opposed to 2 percent who do not support it. Asked to judge whether Iraqis should be segregated by religion, or by ethnicity, 78 percent of Iraqis oppose those prospects; only 13 percent support them. In multi-ethnic Baghdad, where most of the sectarian revenge killings occur, 76 percent of the public opposed ethnic separation; 10 percent supported it.

Other questions touch obliquely on issues of national unity. The division of oil revenues between the governates (states) and the central authority remains a core issue of Iraqi politics. It stands as a proxy for the question of whether Iraq will remain a nation. (The major oil deposits are in the Kurdish north and the Shiite south.)

Read the rest.