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"They are not losing, I think it's fair to say," said General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a discussion at a news conference. Security Forum in Halifax, Nova Scotia. "We used the term" dead end "a year ago and, relatively speaking, it has not changed much."
Dunford said that if there could ever be a "military solution" to bring peace to Afghanistan, the United States and its NATO partners are striving to put pressure on the pressures military, political and economic to convince the Taliban that it is in their interest to negotiate a political solution to the crisis with the Kabul government.
"Without going into details, we think that the Taliban know they have to come to terms at some point," he said. "The key to success is to combine all this pressure to urge the Taliban to negotiate."
While Dunford said the recent elections in Afghanistan were "largely successful" and stressed the importance of next year's presidential election, he added, "I think we are far from power, "he added. achieved.
As part of the administration's strategy to find a political solution to the 17-year-old war, President Donald Trump announced an increase in US troops last year, bringing the total to 14,000. total number of soldiers in the country.
But the progress made in ending the decade-long conflict has proved elusive.
And Afghan security forces, which led the United States in 2014 in efforts to secure the country, are still suffering a high number of casualties in their fight against the Taliban.
Last month, US Secretary of Defense James Mattis told a Washington hearing that Afghan forces had "killed more than a thousand dead and wounded" in August and September in an attempt to protect the Afghan parliamentary elections of October.
"They remained on the ground fighting, and the Taliban were prevented from doing what they intended to do: take and hold districts and provincial centers, as well as disrupt an election that they could not disrupt, "said Mattis. .
