Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has predicted the United States and NATO forces will never be able to defeat the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. Harper made the comment in an interview on CNN with Fareed Zakaria.

Stephen Harper: “We’re not going to win this war just by staying. We’re not going to — in fact, my own judgment, Fareed, is, quite frankly, we are not going to ever defeat the insurgency. Afghanistan has probably had — my reading of Afghanistan, the history — has probably had an insurgency forever, of some kind. What has to happen in Afghanistan is we have to have an Afghan government that is capable of managing that insurgency and improving its own governance.”

Canada currently has about 2,700 troops in Afghanistan.