BRUSSELS, Jan 27: Nato-led forces have regained the momentum against rebels in Afghanistan but still face a tough fight, the alliance's top officer said on Thursday, comparing the campaign to a turning point in World War II.

Italian Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola said “the tide has been reversed” in the fight against Taliban and expressed confidence Afghan forces will be ready to take over security responsibility nationwide by 2014 as planned.

However, warning of another “tough fight ahead in 2011,” Di Paola drew a parallel with 1942, a tough year for Allies in World War II when Nazi troops continued to advance in Russia and their Japanese allies across Asia.

But it was also in November that year that British forces defeated the Germans in the Battle of El Alamein, north Africa, seen as a turning point in the war.

“Think of World War II: 1942, if you were an American you knew were in the worst moment of history, and still the tide had already changed,” he argued.

“There was a lot of fighting in '43, '44, but in '42 when the horizon was very bleak and the sky was very dark, the light was already coming in... What was happening in 1942, that's what's happening today in Afghanistan,” he said.

Di Paola rejected, though, any comparison with Vietnam in 1975, when US-trained Vietnamese soldiers were overrun by communist guerrillas.

“What I have seen of the Afghan security forces, of the way they are trained, the way they do operate, the way they start training themselves is something that was not there in 1975,” Di Paola said.

Di Paola, who chairs the committee of military brass from the 28-nation alliance, gave his assessment after the top officers held their first meeting of the year at Nato headquarters.

General David Petraeus, the commander of Nato and US forces in Afghanistan, told the assembled military chiefs via video conference that the campaign was on “the right track,” the admiral said.

Last year was the deadliest one for Western troops in Afghanistan since the US-led overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001, with 711 foreign soldiers killed.

Nato aims to increase the number of Afghan security forces from 256,000 to 306,000 by October this year.—AFP