By DPA
London : Britain's presence in Afghanistan will be required for "decades" to come to promote the country's development and resist Taliban forces, Britain's ambassador to Kabul said Wednesday.
"The task of standing up a government of Afghanistan that is sustainable is going to take a very long time," Ambassador Sherard Cowper-Coles told the British Broadcasting Service (BBC) in an interview.
"It's a marathon rather than a sprint – we should be thinking in terms of decades," he said.
The message he was getting from the Afghan people, especially in the southern province of Helmand, was that they wanted British help to "protect" them from the Taliban, said the diplomat. They did not want to return to the "dark days of medieval Taliban rule", he added.
"Their worry isn't about us staying, it's about us going; about us not finishing the job of standing up the police, standing up the security forces, standing up the judicial system, putting schools and hospitals in place."
The BBC report said the British government planned to send an extra 35 diplomatic staff to Afghanistan this year.
British troop levels in southern Afghanistan are scheduled to rise to 7,700 this year.
"We are going to win this, but it's going to take time," said Cowper-Coles.