The Afghan Taliban on Tuesday rejected comments by the commander of Nato and US forces that their progress had been reversed, saying attacks were increasing around the capital as well as in their heartland in the south. General David Petraeus told the BBC at the weekend that momentum by the Islamists had been checked in their strongholds in Kandahar and Helmand provinces.
He also told NBC television's "Meet the Press" programme the battle against the Taliban-led insurgency was an "up and down process" in which areas of progress had been made. Petraeus and Afghan President Hamid Karzai gave a series of interviews at the weekend aimed at boosting flagging public confidence in the war. The Taliban have also become increasingly sophisticated in their use of the media and issued a statement on Tuesday to deny Petraeus's comments.
"Mujahideen operations have intensified more than ever especially in the provinces surrounding Kabul," spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi said in a statement emailed to media by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the title used by the Taliban when they ruled Afghanistan from 1996-2001.
Violence across Afghanistan has reached record levels despite the presence of almost 150,000 US and Nato troops. US and Nato forces have stepped up operations after the Taliban insurgency spread out of the south and east into once relatively peaceful areas of the north and west.
US President Barack Obama is due to make a strategy review of the war in December, a month after crucial mid-term Congressional elections will be held amid growing doubts over a war that has dragged on for almost 10 years. Afghanistan also faces parliamentary elections on September 18 that loom as an important test of stability, as well as the credibility of the Afghan government after presidential polls marred by fraud last year.
While military commanders have warned the fight will only get tougher, Obama wants to begin withdrawing forces from Afghanistan from July next year. Ahmadi ridiculed the Marjah offensive, accusing foreign forces of making it "sound like a third world war" and saying they had suffered "a disgraceful defeat". He repeated the Taliban's demand that all foreign forces should leave Afghanistan "and stop sacrificing your sons and daughters for a war which is unwinnable".