British ambassador: Afghans should be allowed to 'get on with things'
The British ambassador in Kabul said the international community has been "hand-holding" Afghanistan for long enough and that Afghans should now be allowed to "get on with things".
Sir Richard Stagg told The Guardian: "The more the people of Afghanistan see their own government stand on its own two feet, the better for everybody.
"This is not a matter of us cutting and running and disappearing, it is a matter of shifting the nature of our engagement from hand-holding to one which is offering support as needed and required."
He added: "We need to allow (the Afghans) to get on with things more. The international community has been a bit omnipresent in the last decade and we need to move to a different business model in which we are there to provide help and guidance but not there to try to take decisions for them."