The number of hard-core Taleban and al Qaeda guerrillas in Afghanistan has dropped below 1,000 and their strength appears to be waning, Nato's top commander said late on Monday.
The assessment was at odds with the general perception but US Marine General James Jones, speaking to reporters on a military plane after visiting Afghanistan, said he was returning with a rosier perception of the security threat.
"I came away with a new sense of the level of the threat, which is quite a bit lower than I had thought," he said, adding that the number of "really hard-core fighters that remain is quite a bit less than I thought: under a thousand."
His comments were based on briefings at the headquarters of US-led Operation Enduring Freedom, whose 10,600 troops are hunting die-hard Taleban militia and al Qaeda agents.
Jones said it was essential to tackle Afghanistan's growing drug trade, preferably by Afghan forces rather than foreign troops, because it was "an economic lifeline which probably fuels what's left of the Taleban and al Qaeda".
The Taleban recently shifted the focus of its jihad, or holy war, against foreign soldiers to target troops in big cities, where they say they have dozens of would-be suicide bombers, and away from remote rural areas in the south and east.
A Canadian soldier was killed in the capital, Kabul, last month by a suicide bomber, and a day later a British peacekeeper died in a suicide car bomb attack.
The Taleban claimed responsibility for both attacks, and also said they were behind a December suicide bombing in which five Afghan security officials were killed in the capital.
Jones, putting final touches to a plan for Nato to expand its Kabul peacekeeping operation into the provinces, said the suicide bombing was "a worry but also a sign of desperation".
"I think what they try to do is to have these attacks near simultaneously in different parts of the country so it gives the appearance of more mass than there really is," he said.
Jones said those briefing him felt the guerrillas were running out of energy or funds, or just getting tired.
US-led forces ousted Afghanistan's ruling Taleban and routed al Qaeda fighters after the September 11 hijacked aircraft attacks on New York and Washington in 2001.
Despite a swift military victory and the establishment of a new Afghan government, al Qaeda and Taleban forces periodically stage bomb attacks or battle US troops.
Jones said he would feed the latest intelligence into plans for the forces required to protect Nato-commanded Provincial Reconstruction Teams, groups of soldiers who carry out small reconstruction projects or provide security for aid workers.
He said the 19-nation alliance was aiming to set up five new PRTs before its summit in Istanbul at the end of June, which - with the one already under ISAF's command and the 12 reporting to Operation Enduring Freedom - would take the total to 18.
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