What Pakistanis Think About U.S. Drone Strikes and Why

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In a recent article published in Political Science Quarterly, we report that this conventional wisdom about Pakistanis’ universal opposition to the drones is not empirically supported. Pew data from 2010 demonstrate that nearly two-thirds of Pakistanis have never heard of the drone program, despite the extensive media coverage it has received in Pakistan and beyond. (Since drafting this paper, Pew has released newer data. However, at the time of writing and analysis, this was the most recent data available.) We conclude that Pakistani public opinion is less informed and much less unanimous than is often presumed.

We examined Pakistani media coverage of the drone program to draw out the arguments advanced in what we call an “elite discourse” about drones. We argue that this discourse is elite because most Pakistanis do not obtain information from newspapers (in any language) due to illiteracy: Only 55% of Pakistanis over the age of fifteen years of age can read and write. We augment this Pakistan-focused research with the scholarly literature on public opinion formation, which contends that societal and political elites play a large role in shaping what the public thinks about policy issues, particularly policy issues they do not understand very well. Our analysis suggests that the Pakistani debate over drones is waged among elites, who nonetheless differ in key ways, such as level of education, literacy in English, and access to non-Urdu media.

Drawing from our examination of Pakistani media coverage and the scholarly literature on public opinion formation, we put forward several hypotheses about who will oppose the program and why. We tested these hypotheses using data from the 2010 Pew Global Attitudes survey, which included questions about drone strikes in Pakistan. To determine the factors that predict support or opposition to the program, we leverage several questions in the Pew data, which we use variously for our dependent and explanatory variables in a Heckman probit model. We use Heckman to account for the selection effects described below.

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What a polite way to prove that imams whip up the uneducated rabble in Pakistan in particular, Islamic places in general.
The ones who can read are few.
The ones who get their opinions from their Friday prayer meetings are many.
Yet, for all that, the majority is too scared to even take a stand on a poll, much less publicly.

Senate Drops Bid to Report on Drone Use

WASHINGTON — The Senate has quietly stripped a provision from an intelligence bill that would have required President Obama to make public each year the number of people killed or injured in targeted killing operations in Pakistan and other countries where the United States uses lethal force.

The move highlights the continued resistance inside the government about making these operations, primarily carried out using armed drones, more accountable to public scrutiny. In a letter to the Senate earlier this month, James R. Clapper, the director of national intelligence, expressed concern that a public report would undermine the effectiveness of the operations.

The provision, passed by the Senate Intelligence Committee last year as part of its authorization bill, required Mr. Obama to make public an annual report on “the total number of combatants killed or injured during the preceding year by the use of targeted lethal force outside the United States by remotely piloted aircraft.” The provision was the same for civilians killed or injured. But officials said that the provision encountered almost immediate resistance both from intelligence officials and Republican lawmakers, some who have fought against any changes to the way the targeted killing program has been managed…(snip)

…“Congress is charged with oversight of the administration and this is a matter of life and death,” said Steven W. Hawkins, executive director of Amnesty International USA. “A basic report on the number of people killed shouldn’t be too much to ask.”