Top general: NATO not losing Afghan war

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
The top NATO general in Afghanistan said that he rejects the idea that NATO is losing the Afghanistan war to an increasingly bloody Taliban insurgency. But US Gen. David McKiernan also said Sunday he needs more military forces to tamp down the militants, and he painted a picture of a chaotic Afghan countryside where insurgents hold more power than the Afghan government seven years after the US-led invasion. He said better governance and economic progress were vital. "It is true that in many places of this country we don't have an acceptable level of security. We don't have good governance. We don't have socio-economic progress," he told a news conference in Kabul. "We don't have progress as evenly or as fast as many of us would like, but we are not losing Afghanistan," he said.