Schweitzer said the Taliban sometimes enters an unguarded hamlet and briefly occupies it before being routed by NATO and Afghan government troops.

Schweitzer reiterated what other U.S. commanders have said: The much ballyhooed Taliban spring offensive was a bust. Commanders say NATO forces last winter took the offensive, attacking enemy forces before they could launch.

“If this is the spring offensive, things are going to be just fine,” he said.

Still, fighting has accelerated this week in what the NATO command calls the Taliban’s “fighting season” of spring and summer. Taliban fighters look for vulnerable areas in the provinces of Kandahar and neighboring Uruzgan and try to seize them. Both are areas from which the Taliban rose to power in the 1990s and where it still commands a loyal following.

The Associated Press reports that more than 100 insurgents and civilians have been killed in fighting since Saturday.

As its casualties mount, the Taliban is turning more to suicide bombers as a weapon, targeting the police nationwide and government buildings in the capital, Kabul.

Afghan Maj. Gen. Abdul Khaliq, who appeared with Schweitzer in the video teleconference at the Pentagon, said the Taliban has remained resilient in the war’s sixth year because it is getting help from al Qaeda, as well as money and arms from outside Afghanistan.

“The people, they don’t want the Taliban and their dark policy,” he said.

Schweitzer, whose soldiers fight alongside Khaliq’s men, asserted that the Afghan National Army has matured to the point where Taliban fighters “don’t dare touch the ANA because they’ll get whacked.”

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