Just like majority of Afghans, President Hamid Karzai is also optimistic about the future of Afghanistan. Lately a survey conducted by Asia Foundation concluded that 52 percent of Afghans think positively about the future of their country. Meanwhile President Karzai is also seeing the goblet as half full when it comes to the future Afghanistan.

He said yesterday, “The Westerners follow their objectives and we follow ours. They use their powerful media to spread unrealistic thoughts about the future of Afghanistan but we are required not to deviate from moving towards our own objectives.” According to him no chaotic condition is awaiting Afghanistan after 2014 and the Western media is unnecessarily trying to draw a bleak picture of Afghanistan’s future.

The next presidential election will be held in April, 2014 and Western newspapers have already published certain pieces containing speculation about future political strategies of Mr. Karzai. Some political pundits are of the view that Mr. Kazai has no intentions in his mind to abandon power when his term finishes, although constitutionally he is not allowed to do so.

They say Karzai will probably announce emergency state in the country to remain in power. But Karzai has not only rejected the possibility of taking such a step but also has cleared, time and again, that he has no plan run in the next presidential election.

Now what are the reasons of Karzai’s optimism? Why he thinks the West is wrongly propagating about post 2014 Afghanistan? Afghan government has been putting efforts to engage the Taliban leadership into peace talks and in that way it hopes it would be able to put a period to the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan. Recently, a delegation of High Peace Council (HPC) visited Pakistan as result of which around a dozen of Taliban’s so-called commanders have been released from the captivity of Pakistani government. Although it not clear yet that whether the released insurgents are of any use to HPC, the Afghan government deems their release an important step forward.

The next thing is that Afghanistan has entered into a number of strategic partnership agreements with some financially, militarily and politically strong countries including the US. Based on these partnerships, Afghanistan will continue to gain international support to move towards stability. That is another reason for Karzai optimism.

Also, President Karzai has called upon Western allies of Afghanistan to provide ANSF with latest war crafts, weapons and other necessary military equipments. If they fail, he has warned, Afghanistan would need to look elsewhere to fulfill its military requirements.

Despite all the positive thoughts the Afghan government is attempting to inject into the minds of Afghans, the fact that foreign troops’ withdrawal will have somewhat negative impacts on the Afghanistan’s economy and political condition cannot be neglected. It has to be seen how the Afghan government and the international community will attempt to tackle the situation properly amid growing insurgency in the country.