'Afghanistan won't collapse after troop pull out'

The planned withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan will not lead to the collapse of the war-torn nation, a senior United States official has said.

"Afghanistan is far from stable and has a long journey ahead of it toward stability. But is Afghanistan likely to collapse to some Taliban onslaught as we move through a transition? We don't think so," said Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Vikram Singh at the US Institute of Peace, a Washington-based think tank.

"Are we able and are we committed to staying engaged in Afghanistan and not sort of repeating the folly of the 1990s? We're committed to that," Singh, an Indian American, said.

He said the surge of troops announced by Obama in December 2009 in the 18 months since then has set the stage for the political process in the country. "We think the surge has essentially helped set the stage for a political process to be more hopeful now than it has been at any time," Singh said

However, the Taliban has been under an unprecedented level of military pressure, he said. "Now, I don't know how long it will be sustainable and how good it would look if there were no political progress, so we have got to be focused on reconciliation," he said.

Singh said Afghanistan is not going to collapse as long as the international community stays engaged there. "You've seen Pakistan voice its support for some kind of political process. You've seen Russia publicly saying we will support an Afghan-led reconciliation, you've seen India saying, we can support an Afghan-led reconciliation," Singh said.

"So I think what's happened is the idea has taken root. And when you dispassionately look at the interests it's not tremendous. The overlap in the interests of countries, interests of the Taliban as a political entity in Afghanistan, of the existing Afghan government, of other elements of Afghan society different ethnic groups, political opposition, and of the United States and the international community.

Al Qaeda, he said, is definitely reeling under the increased American and international pressure that we've put on it.

"We are getting to a point where the question is, can and will the Taliban at some point decide we could break with Al Qaida and other terrorist groups; we could find a deal with the Afghan government that would get us back out of Pakistan, where life is not necessarily all that comfortable and things are not all that certain. It's been a long time. People are tired of war," Singh said.