'International Troops in Afghanistan to Stay for a Decade'
Pakistan Times Foreign Desk

OSNABRUECK (Germany): Foreign troops in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) will have to stay in Afghanistan for at least a decade, one of the force's German commanders said in a report on Monday.

Brigadier Walter Spindler told the Neuen Osnabruecker Zeitung newspaper that the 7,000-strong force which includes around 2,000 German soldiers "can reckon with a decade at the earliest, providing developments are positive".

Progress had been made in setting up the army, the police force and the secret service, but they needed time to become established, Spindler said.

However the international troops will be required over the next 10 years to defend the reconstruction of Afghanistan against drug barons and warlords.

The Brigadier said he believed the hardline Taliban militia, who were overthrown by US-led forces in 2001, were now a spent force.

Democratisation Process Irreversible

"After 25 years of war and civil war, the democratisation process is irreversible," Spindler told the paper.

While isolated attacks and kidnappings would continue to take place in the region around the border with Pakistan, the high turnout in last month's first ever democratic presidential elections won by Hamid Karzai had shown "that almost every Afghan was fed up with the extremists," Spindler said.

The German parliament voted in September to extend the German troops' mission in Afghanistan by another year.

ISAF, which is supported by 30 countries, was set up by the United Nations in December 2001 and operates mainly around the capital Kabul. Separately, around 16,500 US troops continue to battle insurgents in the south.●