Washington, July 17: Seven and half years after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, a top US military commander says he has no idea how long it will take for security to improve in Afghanistan.
“I don’t know how long. I know that it’s gotten progressively worse over the last three, three-and-a-half years, since 2006, and the Taliban has gotten much better,” Adm Michael Mullen said in an interview with the BBC at the Bagram airbase in north of Kabul.
However, Mullen said that a recent increase in troops number would be helpful in retaking back some of Taliban-held territories.
“Taliban were much more violent, much more organized, and so there’s going to be fighting that is associated with this.”
US-led forces have lost several grounds to the insugents in the troubled sourthern and eastern provinces in recent months.
However, Mullen conceeded that it can take several years for the US-led forces to defeat the Taliban linked militants across the war-ravaged Afghanistan.
Also, US President Barack Obama said last week that the troops in Afghanistan would face “tough fighting” in the upcoming months and would “still have a long way to go.”
Also another top US Commander, General David Petraeus, says that forces stationed in Afghanistan will face ‘tough fighting’ with Taliban militants even beyond 2009.
The remarks come as foreign forces stationed in the country are locked in a tough battle with Taliban insurgents in the troubled southern provinces.
Taliban-linked militants have killed dozens of US-led troops across the volatile countries during last two weeks.
So far this month at least 47 deaths have been reported among foreign forces. The deaths make July the deadliest month for the US and its allies in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion.
More than 100 US troops have died this year in the conflict-torn country. The deaths pile further pressure on the governments involved in the invasion.
Some 90,000 US-led troops have been deployed to the country.
The US-led coalition invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to allegedly destroy militancy in the country, arrest its leaders and bring an end to opium trade.
This is while Afghanistan’s opium output has risen more than 40-fold since invasion 8 years ago, according to the United Nations’ figures. Afghanistan’s eastern and southern provinces produce much of the heroin that funds the Taliban.
The conflict-torn country supplies more than 90 percent of the world’s heroin.
—–Agencies