30 May Washington Post - NATO General Tells of Taliban Setbacks by Jason Ukman.

A top NATO alliance general said yesterday that Afghanistan's Taliban militia has lost its ability to control large swaths of territory, even if the hard-line Islamic movement remains strong in "small pockets" of the country.

Dutch Maj. Gen. Ton van Loon, who this month ended his tour as commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan's volatile south, said Taliban fighters had been driven out of the regions where they had sought to gain a foothold, including Kandahar city and parts of Helmand province...