Afghan war ‘will get harder’

US SENATOR John McCain said yesterday that the situation in Afghanistan will get more difficult before it gets easier — “just like the surge in Iraq was” — as the US prepares to pour thousands more troops into the country, including on the doorsteps of Kabul.

The former Republican presidential candidate, who is to report back to President-elect Barack Obama, visited the southern province of Helmand, where he said NATO forces are at a stalemate with insurgents. McCain said the US will focus more on the region — the heartland of the Taliban movement.

“We’re going to have additional troops and additional help,” McCain said of the country’s south.

A record 32,000 US troops are now stationed in Afghanistan, with requests for 20,000 more from American commanders.

Violence has also spiked across the border in Pakistan, where gunmen blasted their way into two transport terminals on Sunday and torched more than 160 vehicles destined for US and Afghan National Army troops.

Insurgents this year took over wide swaths of countryside south of the Afghan capital. Attacks on supply convoys on the road leading from Kabul to the southern city of Kandahar are commonplace. In response, US commanders are sending some 3,000 to 3,500 troops to the provinces of Wardak and Logar for the first time next month.