BAGRAM AIR BASE, May 11: The US military says it is committed to hanging on in Afghanistan for the long run, but its British allies seem less certain.

Two apparently diverging views on the state of play in the Afghan war emerged this week as the top British officer on the ground declared the campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda “all but won”.

Not so, said Major General Franklin “Buster” Hagenbeck, the two-star commander of the US 10th Mountain Division and chief of the 12,000 to 13,000-strong US-led, international forces in Afghanistan.

While Western troops out scouring the mountains of eastern Afghanistan have not had any major contact with rebels since Operation Anaconda in March, Hagenbeck said in an interview the enemy remained active.

“We do know of instances where Al Qaeda and Taliban in the last couple of months since Anaconda have gone into local areas and spread a lot of money around in an effort to garner the support from the local people,” he told the Financial Times and Los Angeles Times in a joint interview.

With few visible enemies left, the combat-hungry international troops are getting itchy feet.

Headlines in British tabloids declaring the 1,700-strong deployment of Royal Marines to Afghanistan a “Phoney War” do not help.

This week, the top British commander in Afghanistan, Brigadier Roger Lane, said the campaign was all but won and he expected large offensive operations by coalition troops to peter out “in weeks rather than months”.

LOT TO BE DONE: The American military clearly believes there is still a lot to be done in the country racked by more than two decades of war.

Hagenbeck said he saw a need for some considerable time to have a significant fighting force at the ready for another Anaconda, when US-led forces battled hundreds of guerillas in the Shahi-i-Kot valley.

At a prayer breakfast on Friday attended by US, British, Australian, Polish and Canadian troops, the general said the rebels had learned not to take the coalition on in numbers.

That did not mean they had stopped planning attacks that could fling Afghanistan off the path to stability, however.

“The fact is that the Al Qaeda and Taliban always have other means to accomplish their desired ends,” he said.

“They would much prefer to destroy civilians in a market in Kandahar, a school in Bagram or a Loya Jirga (grand council) meeting in Kabul than to again take head-on the US and coalition forces here in Afghanistan.”—Reuters