We're NOT Losing Afghan War Says Top General

The top NATO general in Afghanistan on Sunday rejected the idea that NATO is losing the Afghanistan war to an increasingly bloody Taliban insurgency.

But U.S. Gen. David McKiernan also said he needs more military forces to tamp down the militants, and he depicted a chaotic Afghan countryside where insurgents hold more power than the Afghan government seven years after the U.S.-led invasion. He said better governance and economic progress were vital.

It is true that in many places of this country we don't have an acceptable level of security. We don't have good governance. We don't have socio-economic progress. We don't have people that are able to grow their produce and get it to market. We don't have freedom of movement, we don't have progress as evenly or as fast as many of us would like, but we are not losing Afghanistan," he told a news conference in Kabul.

In the country's wild south, meanwhile, Taliban militants launched a surprise attack on the provincial capital of Helmand, sparking a battle that killed about 60 insurgents, an Afghan official said.

Ahmadi's death tolls could not be verified independently. Journalists are not able to travel to remote and dangerous battle sites. Afghan officials have been known to exaggerate death tolls in the past.

Insurgency-related violence has killed more than 4,800 people - mostly militants - this year, according to an Associated Press count of figures from Western and Afghan officials. A record number of U.S. and NATO soldiers have died in 2008.