KABUL, Sept 4 (Reuters) - International forces in Afghanistan have at times overstated the progress being made this year, the deputy commander of the NATO-led force said on Saturday, with advances coming slower than originally expected.
British Lieutenant-General Sir Nick Parker, second-in-command of the International Security Assistance Force behind U.S. General David Petraeus, said progress had been slowed by the complexity of the mission.
Petraeus has said in a range of interviews in recent weeks that progress was being made and that the Taliban’s momentum had been checked, though violence across the country is at its worst since the hardline Islamists were ousted in late 2001.
Progress made is coming into sharper focus, with U.S. President Barack Obama to conduct a strategy review in December and public support for the war sagging amid record casualties.
For the past year, principally U.S. and British NATO forces have been pushing through Taliban strongholds in southern Helmand and Kandahar provinces, making painstaking progress through a network of valleys and mountains and seeking to counter a growing Taliban-led insurgency from all sides.
ISAF troops have faced stiff resistance since Operation Moshtarak began in late February, particularly around the Taliban stronghold of Marjah in the Helmand River valley.
"If you were to go back and listen to the sort of things we said in January and February, before Moshtarak started, I think we were probably a little bit over-enthusiastic," Parker told a small group of reporters in Kabul.
"I was, in some of the things I said, a little bit too positive in some respects," he said.
