The international community failed to fully appreciate the difficulty of defeating the Taliban and rebuilding Afghanistan, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Monday.
"I believe the international community underestimated the mission in Afghanistan," Rasmussen said in an interview with Danish TV station TV2 News ahead of a conference of donors in Kabul Tuesday.
"That is why it is taking a long time to help the Afghans establish sufficient capacity to rebuild the country and ensure peace and stability," he said.
Representatives of 60 countries, including US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, will meet in the Afghan capital in a bid to build on pledges made at a conference in London in January.
"Keep in mind that after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Afghan society had to be rebuilt from nothing," Rasmussen said.
The NATO chief said he was optimistic about the future of Afghanistan, but admitted that the losses suffered by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force were "too high".
The death toll has reached 379 since the start of the year, which Rasmussen said was due to increasing numbers of soldiers being deployed to root out Taliban strongholds in Helmand and Kandahar.
"The Taliban know that if they lose these strongholds, they lose everything. That is why they are counterattacking hard, which unfortunately will lead to more deaths in the coming weeks and months," he said.
Rasmussen said NATO's efforts to train Afghan soldiers and police were ahead of schedule, and the gradual transfer of security to local forces would be launched at a NATO summit in November.
"We are in agreement with the Afghan government over the manner of transfering this responsibility," said Rasmussen, adding that details would be spelled out in a document to be released at Tuesday's conference.
At the conference, Afghan President Hamid Karzai is expected to lay out a timeframe that would see foreign combat troops withdraw by the end of 2014, according to diplomatic sources.
"NATO is five months ahead of schedule in the training of the Afghan army," said Rasmussen, while urging member states to provide more trainers.
The objective of training 134,000 soldiers by the end of 2010 has already been achieved, and a total of 300,000 soldiers and police will be trained by October 2011, he said.
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