Arab Countries Suspicious of American Motives

WASHINGTON, 3 December 2005 — Arab countries are acutely suspicious of the Bush administration’s “democracy” agenda in the Middle East and believe the US invasion of Iraq has made the region less secure, said a poll released yesterday.

The poll, conducted in six Arab countries in October, found 78 percent of respondents thought there was more terrorism because of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, with four out of five saying the war had brought less peace to the region.

Asked which countries posed the biggest threat to their countries, a majority chose Israel and the United States.

“The one fascinating outcome of this study is that the respondents view the United States and its policies through the prism of Iraq and Israel,” said Professor Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland, who conducted the poll with Zogby International in Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

Rather than being a model to inspire Arab states to adopt democratic goals, Telhami said respondents felt the opposite was true of the United States, whose human rights image has been tarnished by scandals involving abuse by US forces of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and at a US base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In the poll, 69 percent of those surveyed doubted that spreading democracy was the real US objective. Oil, protecting Israel, dominating the region and weakening the Muslim world were seen as US goals.

Asked what their biggest concerns were about Iraq, a third feared the country would split up because of sectarian divisions, while 23 percent worried the United States would dominate the country after the transfer of power and 27 percent fretted that instability would spill over into the region.

More than half — 58 percent — said Iraq was less democratic than before the war and three of four said Iraqis were worse off.

Asked which countries they would like to be the superpower, the most popular choice was France with 21 percent, followed by China with 13 percent, Pakistan and Germany tied with 10 percent, Britain with 7 percent, the United States with 6 percent and finally Russia with 5 percent.

France, which opposed the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, was also seen as the country where people had the most freedom and its President Jacques Chirac, was the leader most admired by respondents. Other popular leaders were late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

The poll was taken before an outbreak of riots in France by disaffected youths, many of them Muslims of North African ethnicity, which provoked Muslim criticism of conditions for minorities in France.

Israeli President Ariel Sharon, US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were the most disliked by those polled.

On Iran, most of the respondents said the US adversary should have the right to a nuclear program and international pressure should cease while 21 percent said it should be pressured to stop its nuclear ambitions. The most popular television network for international news was Al Jazeera, favored by 45 percent.

Interviewers polled 800 people each from Egypt, Morocco and Saudi Arabia; 500 each were questioned in Jordan and Lebanon and 217 were interviewed in the United Arab Emirates. The margin of error was 3.5 percent to 4.5 percent in all of the countries, except for the United Arab Emirates where it was plus or minus 6.8 percent.