The Taliban can now either "reconcile, live in irrelevance or die", the top US and NATO commander said today, asserting that due to sustained pressure the terrorist group can no longer win the war in Afghanistan.
However, Gen John Nicholson, in a video conference with Pentagon reporters from Kabul, said reconciliation with the Taliban will take some time.
After the announcement of the US' new South Asia strategy by President Donald Trump in August, the Taliban has adopted guerrilla-style warfare, with hit-and-run and suicide attacks.
"Each of these shifts represented to us a lowering of ambition by the enemy. Now, reconciliation will take some time. We'll have to continue to apply the three types of pressure, engage within the region and leverage all of the instruments available to meet our goals," he said.
"In the face of this pressure, the Taliban cannot win. Their choices are to reconcile, live in irrelevance, or die," Nicholson said.
Asserting that Taliban is not a popular insurgency, he said the Afghan people outrightly reject them.
Up to 90 per cent of Afghans believe that a return to Taliban rule would be bad for the country, he added.
Nicholson said the Taliban, in some ways, have evolved into a criminal or narco-insurgency.
"They are fighting to defend their revenue streams. They have increasingly lost whatever ideological anchor they once had. They fight to preserve and expand their sources of revenue. This includes narcotics trafficking, illegal mining, taxing people throughout Afghanistan, kidnapping and murder- for-hire: all criminal endeavours," he said.
Observing that the US has tripled the amount of air- delivered munitions it has deployed, he said as assets free up from Iraq and Syria and the successful fight against ISIS in that theatre, he expects to see more assets come to Afghanistan.
"The momentum is now with the Afghan security forces and the Taliban cannot win in the face of the pressures that I outlined. Again, their choices are to reconcile, live in irrelevance, or die," Nicholson said.
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