In an interview with The Sunday Times, the commander of British forces in Afghanistan, Brig.-Gen. Mark Carleton-Smith, suggested that NATO troops may well leave the country before an insurgency is entirely defeated.
"We're not going to win this war," he told the newspaper. "It's about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that's not a strategic threat and can be managed by the Afghan army."
British forces are stationed mainly in Helmand province. Canadian troops are based in Kandahar province, where there are similar problems with the Taliban.
Carleton-Smith said the NATO role is to contain the insurgency to the extent that it can be dealt with by the Afghan National Army after foreign troops leave.
He also said that negotiations may be necessary to end a Taliban insurgency.
"If the Taliban were prepared to sit on the other side of the table and talk about a political settlement, then that's precisely the sort of progress that concludes insurgencies like this," Carleton-Smith said. "That shouldn't make people uncomfortable."
Former Liberal foreign affairs minister John Manley said his review of the Afghanistan mission, released in January at the request of the Conservative government, also proposed the idea of negotiating with insurgents.
"When you use decapitation as a method of persuasion, it's hard to find common ground with those people," he told CTV's Question Period. "But we shouldn't allow ourselves to go down the road of thinking that's the only group that's out there. There are lots of them that are different from that, and we need to build bridges with them and we need to make their lives better. We need to make sure that we are empowering those groups in society, particularly women, who can offset that."
CTV's Paul Workman, based in Kandahar, said Sunday that many Afghan and NATO leaders feel the Taliban "may have to be brought into the structure of the country, may have to be involved in government and that would be the only way to bring peace to Afghanistan."
Last week, Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, said he has spent years seeking Saudi Arabia's help to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table. However, the Taliban have routinely rebuffed offers to negotiate a peace accord.
Taliban leaders view Karzai as a weak leader who they will be able to wrest control of Afghanistan from after foreign troops leave the country.
Drug trade
In addition to the Taliban insurgency and concerns about the strength of the Karzai government, Manley pointed to the drug trade and adequate distribution of development funds as issues that the international community needs to address.
"All of these moving parts are a part of this puzzle," Manley said. "And most of them are not going as well as we would hope."
Manley said that in NATO forces, the United Nations, the European Union and Pakistan, Afghanistan's neighbour to the north, all have a role to play in bringing peace to the region.
Carleton-Smith's outlook on the Afghanistan war came as another Canadians soldier was injured in the country.
Reports say an improvised explosive device detonated around noon local time near an armoured vehicle carrying Canadian troops.
Conservative MP James Moore said the government has been honest about difficulties inherent in the Afghan mission, but NATO efforts have produced results.
"We've been honest with Canadians that this is not going to be an easy mission, it's going to be a difficult one," Moore told CTV's Question Period. "But we're seeing remarkable progress there, we're building universities, 5,000 schools, women now have access to medical care that they never had access to before. So the Afghan mission, I think, has been as success."
NDP candidate Paul Dewar disagreed, saying his party has called for a new strategy for the Afghan mission, which would end military operations and focus on diplomacy and aid. He said Carleton-Smith's comments are in step with that proposal.
"I recall very well in the (House of Commons), our party standing up and saying this isn't going well, this isn't working, we need to change the direction," Dewar told Question Period. "Now we have the military, at least in the U.K., saying the same thing."
At a campaign stop in St. John's, N.L, on Sunday, NDP Leader Jack Layton said ongoing problems with security and a bustling poppy trade are just some of the signs that the current military campaign isn't working.
"These issues suggest that a new approach, that Canada could be a part of leading, I feel, should be undertaken," Layton said.
