South Asia Center Nonresident Senior Fellow Barbara Slavin writes for Al-Monitor on a study detailing how Middle East citizens view ISIS and the US government’s role in countering extremist violence:
A new survey of eight Middle East countries finds consensus on two issues — that the group that calls itself the Islamic State (IS) is a major threat and that the United States’ role in countering extremist violence in the region is “extremely negative.”
Conducted in September before recent terrorist attacks in France and the United States, the face-to-face surveys with 7,400 adults in six Arab states plus Turkey and Iran also found wide support among Arabs for the creation of a joint Arab force to try to resolve conflicts in Syria, Iraq and potentially to serve as peacekeepers in a Palestinian state.