Kabul: The international community will continue supporting Afghanistan after US and NATO combat forces leave the war wracked nation by the end of 2014, a top UN envoy said Tuesday.
Jan Kubis said he heard strong commitment for Afghanistan at a recent UN Security Council meeting and dismissed predictions that the nation was headed for collapse after the foreign troops withdraw.
"That commitment is based not on the expectation of seeing Afghanistan collapsing after 2014," Kubis told reporters at a news conference in Kabul.
"On the contrary, there is an expectation that Afghanistan will work, will develop with problems, with challenges, with difficulties - maybe more than now but still will develop."
Fears have been looming that Afghanistan, which remains bitterly divided and where ethnic tensions still simmer, could again fracture along ethnic lines once the foreigners leave as it did after the Soviet exit from Afghanistan in the 1990s.
"The international community is ready to do everything possible to support Afghanistan and frankly, to help Afghanistan not lapse into these kind of doom and gloom scenarios that are coming from different places," said Kubis, the UN envoy to Afghanistan.
His remarks contrast those of other experts and envoys, such as Reto Stocker, the outgoing head of the International Red Cross mission in the country, who said yesterday that civilians remain in greater danger and with less hope for peace than when he arrived seven years ago.
Also yesterday, the Brussels based International Crisis Group`s senior Afghan analyst Candace Rondeaux warned of a "real risk that the regime in Kabul could collapse" after the NATO pullout.
She said the Afghan army and police are overwhelmed and under prepared for the transition and that if the upcoming presidential election is tainted by corruption, the unrest that could follow would push Afghanistan to a "breaking point."
PTI
