London's ambassador to Kabul said Wednesday he expects Britain's presence in Afghanistan will last at least "a generation," but hoped that its troops would no longer be fighting there within five years. Mark Sedwill said he hoped the British military, which has seen 38 troops killed in Afghanistan since the start of July, would no longer be in a combat role within three to five years.
The ambassador said he expected the security situation in Afghanistan to improve over the coming years and said the presidential election campaign boded well for creating a truly national government. "We would expect security to improve over the next few years with the US surge," Sedwill told reporters at the Foreign Office in London via videolink from Kabul.
"I hope that British forces are no longer in combat roles three to five years from now because the Afghan forces should by then be big enough and capable enough to take on that front-line task. "But we will have British forces here, I am sure, for many years in training and mentoring roles, and some of those still are quite dangerous, incidentally. British has around 9,150 troops in Afghanistan, largely battling Taliban insurgents in the troubled restive southern Helmand province.
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