70% Pakistanis oppose Taliban, 64% consider US an enemy: Survey

[Naveed Yaseen]

ISLAMABAD Pakistan’s views on the Taliban have shifted dramatically in the past year, with 70 percent now opposing the militants, a poll released on Thursday said. The US doesn’t fare well either, with 64 percent of those surveyed seeing Washington as an enemy.

The mounting unpopularity of the Taliban coincides with an explosion of militant violence in Pakistan - attacks have killed more than 2,500 people since the start of 2008 - and the extremists’ attempts to expand their reach and impose a harsh interpretation of Islam in parts of the country. Pew Global Attitudes, a project of a non-partisan research centre based in Washington, conducted face-to-face interviews with 1,254 adult Pakistanis in late May and early June, mostly in urban areas.

In 2008, 27 percent of the people surveyed had a favourable view of the Taliban, and 33 percent saw them unfavourably. The rest had no opinion. ap

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