The Arab Street

The Guardian reports today on a pair of polls of Arab countries, one sponsored by the Arab American Institute, the other by the University of Maryland. Six countries were surveyed and while, "Arabs had mostly favourable views of US technology, democracy, people, films, products and education," the rest of the polls findings make it very clear that US foreign policy in the region is an unmitigated disaster:

In all six countries, an overwhelming majority of Arabs expressed an unfavourable view of the United States, ranging from 69% in Lebanon to 98% in Egypt, according to the AAI poll....

In just two years, the percentage of those with favourable views of the US in Morocco has dropped from 38% to 11%; in Saudi Arabia it has dropped from 12% to 4%; in Jordan from 34% to 15%; in Lebanon from 26% to 20%; and in Egypt - by far the most populous Arab country - the figure dropped from 15% to a negligible 2%....

...Dislike of US policies now seems to be harming Arabs' perception of the country as a whole.

"In the countries we surveyed in both 2002 and 2004, in almost every instance, we found that Arab attitudes to American values, products and policies declined in the past two years," the AAI report said. ...

...If Washington is not extremely alarmed by the polls' findings, it ought to be. Some argue that it's all a matter of presentation, and if only the US could get its message across clearly, everything would be fine. The Bush administration is already trying that with its Arabic-language radio and TV stations. The cost runs to hundreds of millions of dollars and it's probably going down the drain....

...Aware that most Arabs have no first-hand knowledge of the US and get their information about it from the Arab media, the pollsters in the AAI survey decided to check whether this made any difference. Looking more closely at Arab respondents who had visited the US, who knew Americans personally or watched US TV programmes, they found that this group had "somewhat more favourable" views of US values, people and products, but - crucially - their views of US policies were still negative.

The simple fact is that the US is losing the battle for Arab hearts and minds. No matter how many jolly tunes it plays for the Arab world on Radio Sawa, or how much it spends polishing its image through al-Hurra TV, it is not going to win people over. Only a radical change of policies will do that.

Indeed.