Poll Says Most Afghans Support US Forces
KABUL - Nearly seven in 10 Afghans support the presence of U.S. forces in their country, and 61 percent favor the military buildup of 37,000 U.S. and NATO reinforcements now deploying, according to a poll released Monday.
Support for U.S. and NATO forces, however, drops sharply in the south and east where the fighting is the most intense, the poll said.
Support for U.S. and NATO forces, however, drops sharply in the south and east where the fighting is the most intense, the poll said.
Nationwide, 10 percent of Afghans support the Taliban, but the insurgents are backed by a higher percent of the population - 27 percent - in the country's southwest, the poll said.
The poll of a national random sample of 1,534 Afghan adults was conducted from Dec. 11 to Dec. 23 by ABC News, the BBC and ARD German TV, their fifth since 2005. The poll has an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points. Field work was done by the Afghan Center for Socio-Economic and Opinion Research in Kabul, a subsidiary of D3 Systems Inc. in Vienna, Va.
