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Talk about a very, very long haul!

Things aren't on the impove in Iraq. The news, daily, from that war-ravaged country couldn't be worse. One almost gets the impression that we are all now enured to things going badly there. A bombing here, a car-bomb there.....and casualties in large numbers.

On that other war-front, Afghanistan, things aren't too rosy either - so much so that the new British ambassador to Kabul has made what can only be seen as a dire prediction [as the TimesOnLine reports]:

"Britain will need to stay in Afghanistan for "decades" to fight terrorism and pull the country out of poverty, the UK's new ambassador to Kabul said today.

Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, who has been in his post for six weeks, said efforts to stabilise and rebuild the war-torn country would have to be a "marathon rather than a sprint".

In an interview this morning the ambassador, considered one of Britain's biggest diplomatic heavyweights, admitted that the UK should have stepped up its development and regeneration efforts in Afghanistan earlier.

“The task of standing up a government of Afghanistan that is sustainable is going to take a very long time,” Sir Sherard told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme today. “It’s a marathon rather than a sprint. We should be thinking in terms of decades.”

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