Oleg Boronin and Andrei Bykov
Lecturers, Altai Centre for Oriental Studies, Altai State University, Barnaul, Russia
After the tragic events of 11 September 2001, the international community announced that the ‘War on Terror’ was its number-one priority and it stated that Afghanistan had been fundamental in building a citadel of ‘Islamic terror’. The media and representatives of the political élite of ‘the civilised nations and states’, as well as public opinion, waxed lyrical about the good being served by US-led military operations in Afghanistan against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. It was assumed that applying psychological and ideological pressure to the masses, including those in Russia, would help to maintain the support from the overwhelming majority of society for the anti-terrorist coalition. But is this really the case?
To a certain extent, the answer to this question can be found in field research conducted by the authors in November and December 2001. 271 people from the rural areas of Pervomaiskii, Pavlovskii and Kulundinskii region in Altai krai, Russia, responded to a survey. We made a note of why respondents were interested in taking part in the survey and recorded their sex, age group and level of education. The results are representative of the rural inhabitants of Altai krai.
As part of the survey, respondents were required to answer the following question:
How do you feel about events taking place in Afghanistan?
They had to choose one of the following answers:
1. Afghanistan is an independent sovereign state and the US has no right to undertake any military action there;
2. I approve of what the US is doing; or
3. it is difficult to say.
We began the research with the assumption that the majority of those living in the villages of Altai krai essentially backed America’s military campaign. Our hypothesis was based on the following four factors:
1. the top leadership of the Russian Federation had announced that the country would join the ‘anti-terrorist coalition’. (It is well known that President Vladimir Putin’s approval rating is very high);
2. there is a constant stream of anti-Taliban propaganda in the media; almost everyday ‘revelations’ surface about the criminal activities of al-Qaeda and its leaders, particularly Osama bin Laden;
3. the Russian nation is no stranger to political terrorism; and
4. in almost every village in which we carried out research there was a family that had lost relatives in local conflicts in Afghanistan, Chechnya and elsewhere. Concurrent research revealed that 24% of those questioned had a negative attitude towards Afghans. A large amount of antipathy was also directed at Chechens (by almost half of the respondents).
However, the results of the research refuted our hypothesis. Only 11% of respondents supported US-led military action in Afghanistan, and 38% felt that the US did not have the right to conduct anti-terrorist operations against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. It is equally important to note that more than 51% of these interviewed did not express an opinion. When questioned in private on this matter, various explanations were proffered as to why the individual found it difficult to answer. The main reasons were:
1. we do not have enough reliable information on events in Afghanistan, nor do we know to what extent the Taliban and supporters of Osama bin Laden are responsible for the events of 11 September, as official media reports are rarely objective or impartial;
2. although those responsible for the terrorist acts in New York City and Washington DC must not go unpunished, the US and its allies should ensure that their actions still adhere to international law and the principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty’; and
3. the fight against terrorism should continue, but US-led military action in Afghanistan will harm Russia’s national interests in Central Asia.
We also questioned representatives of the Kazakh diaspora in the little village of Kirei in the Kulundinskii region of Altai krai. These respondents proved interesting because they are members of Russia’s Muslim community. The survey shows that 48% of Kirei’s residents do not support US military action in Afghanistan and almost the same number (47%) gave no opinion on the matter. Only 5% expressed the view that they fully supported the US. These results are linked, in our opinion, to the fact that Afghans, like Kazakhs, are Muslims and share the same faith. Thus, religion plays an important role in formulating Russian public opinion on US military action in Afghanistan.
Survey results from the Pervomaiskii and Pavlovskii regions of Altai krai − regions that do not have an international border and are suburban areas of the administrative centre of Barnaul − differ greatly from results from Kulundinskii, which is a border area. 57% of respondents from Pervomaiskii and Pavlovskii do not support US action compared with 33% in Kulundinskii. 12% of those surveyed in Kulundinskii welcomed America’s actions in Afghanistan compared with only 7% in Pervomaiskii and Pavlovskii. If we discount the responses of the 38 Kazakhs questioned in Kirei and focus only on the opinions of Russian-speaking respondents the difference between the two regions is more distinct. In this instance, 15% of respondents in Kulundinskii support America’s action in Afghanistan, 26% are against it and 59% would not give an answer. These data are in marked contrast to those recorded for Altai krai as a whole. We believe that there a number of reasons for this:
1. it would appear that the location of a region’s borders effect the opinions of its residents on military action in Afghanistan. Influenced by the media, the inhabitants of Kulundinskii region feel that they reside in an outpost on the border between Russia and the Muslim part of Central Asia from where the threat of Islamic terrorism comes. They are convinced that, should a terrorist insurgency be launched from across the border in Central Asia, their region will be among the first to be targeted;
2. there are a lot of ethnic Germans in Kulundinskii who intend to emigrate to Germany and thus share the interests and opinions of the Western world;
3. a significant number of respondents from Kulundinskii came to Russia from Kazakhstan and other former Soviet Central Asian republics. These people have a very negative attitude towards the Muslim population in Central Asia;
4. on average, the inhabitants of the suburban regions of Pervomaiskii and Pavlovskii are slightly better educated, which means that they are less susceptible to psychological and ideological manipulation and more inclined to question reports on international terrorism. It also means that they have greater respect for the law, including international law. Accordingly, they feel that the US and its allies are being aggressive and/or consider the military action in Afghanistan to be unlawful interference in the affairs of a sovereign state (if we talking about the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan established by the Taliban), even if the rest of the world did not recognise the Taliban regime.
Thus, the results of our research show that the rural inhabitants of Altai krai are far from united in their opinions on events taking place in Afghanistan. Only a small minority of villagers in Altai krai support US-led military operations in Afghanistan. However, the results cannot be taken to reflect the views of the entire Russian population, since the political sympathies of Altai’s rural population usually lie with the People’s Patriotic Party of Russia and the Communist Party of Russia, which often take an anti-American stance and see ‘humanitarian interventions’ by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) − under US leadership − as acts of aggression. Nevertheless, it goes without saying that, in formulating Russian foreign policy, the president, government and the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation would be well advised to bear in mind such public sentiment.
