Pentagon Admits Defeat in Afghan War

"I'm not convinced we are winning it in Afghanistan," Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in sobering testimony before the US House of Representatives Armed Services Committee nearly seven years after US-led forces toppled Afghanistan's former Taliban regime.

Mullen said he was already "looking at a new, more comprehensive strategy for the region" that would cover both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

"We can hunt down and kill extremists as they cross over the border from Pakistan ... but until we work more closely with the Pakistani government to eliminate the safe havens from which they operate, the enemy will only keep coming."

Mullen was speaking after the United States stepped up its campaign of attacks against militant targets inside Pakistan with a series of missile strikes from unmanned drones and a raid by helicopter-borne US commandos.

The increase in US attacks has sparked an outcry from Pakistani leaders and potentially complicated the challenges facing newly elected Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.

The admiral said US and NATO forces in Afghanistan blamed militant safe havens in Pakistan for launching bolder, more sophisticated attacks on US and NATO forces in eastern Afghanistan.

"Add to this a poor and struggling Afghan economy, a still-healthy narcotics trade there and a significant political uncertainty in Pakistan, and you have all the makings of a complex, difficult struggle that will take time," he said.

He also warned that time was running out on the ability of the West to provide Afghanistan with vital nonmilitary assistance including roads, schools and alternative crops for farmers.

This is while the Afghan government and its international partners agreed Wednesday to expand the national army to 134,000 soldiers, almost double its current strength, the United Nations said.

The decision, already announced by the US military last week, was adopted at a meeting in Kabul of the Afghan government and its partners, including the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).

The Afghan army, which was destroyed during the civil war of the 1990s which was followed by the 1996-2001 rule of the Taliban, is being trained and equipped with international help and has reached about 80,000.

The Afghan army is projected to reach 134,000 within three years, defense ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi said.