Nato and Afghan forces will be able to break the back of Taliban resistance in southern Afghanistan before the end of the year, General Rahim Wardak, Afghan defence minister, told the Financial Times on Sunday.

“I think that in the next two or three months there will be some major changes,” he said, predicting that by November Taliban militants would have lost steam. “The way the Taliban are fighting. It looks like they are crazy. They are no match for these forces and usually that is why they suffer heavy casualties. They cannot continue like that,” he said.