Gen. Fausto Macor commands some 1,800 soldiers, only 270 of whom are allowed to go on patrols -- to secure an area roughly half the size of Italy.

"If NATO in the long run wants to operate effectively, it needs more troops," Benjamin Schreer, security expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, a Berlin-based think tank, told United Press International in a telephone interview Wednesday.

While the Balkans were stabilized by some 60,000 foreign troops, the much larger, much more populated Afghanistan for two years had only 5,000 peacekeepers, all based in Kabul.

Even now, with 35,000 and soon 40,000 NATO troops in the country, it won't be possible to "stabilize Afghanistan in the long run," Schreer said.

Security experts say it would need between 100,000 and 300,000 soldiers to really stabilize the entire country, a number that can hardly be provided by NATO alone -- especially as its key powers, the United States and Britain, are entangled in another resource-heavy war in Iraq.

Yet the battle in Afghanistan is also becoming increasingly bloody, with heavy fighting between NATO forces and the Taliban in the southern and eastern provinces, and an increasing number of roadside bombs, suicide attacks and abductions in the previously stable northern provinces.

Support may one day come from Afghan security forces -- but that's a dream for the future, mainly because the training of the Afghan military and police is making little progress.

NATO said it so far has trained some 38,000 Afghan troops, with the aim to train 32,000 more. Yet the reality looks much gloomier. At a NATO council session in Brussels last week, the NATO ambassadors present wanted to know exactly how many troops of the Afghan army were ready to be deployed in combat. According to German news magazine Der Spiegel, U.S. Maj. Gen. Robert Cone gave only evasive answers. Some 50,000 soldiers are enrolled, but because of AWOLs and recruitment problems, only 30,000 soldiers are "available," he said. When the ambassadors pressed on, asking how many were ready for an actual mission, Cone said, after a pause: "To be frank: Zero."

The situation concerning Afghanistan's police is even worse.

Since 2002 Germany has headed the police-training mission, which has "completely failed," Schreer said. The Germans went to Afghanistan with a maximum of 40 to 60 trainers; many of them have since deserted the corrupt force, with warlords and Taliban offering them roughly $500 a month for their newly acquired skills, more than eight times a regular police officer is paid.

The Germans earlier this year gave away responsibility for police training in favor of the EU-mandated EUPOL training mission, but the problems seem to be the same. EUPOL, officials on the ground have complained, is just as understaffed and underfunded as the old mission.

And the money is not only lacking for security projects -- the overall civilian aid package is not great either.

In 2003 the RAND Corp. found that in the first two years after both wars ended, Bosnia received $1,390 per capita in aid money, while Afghanistan received only $42 per citizen.

Even as several countries have pledged to increase their development aid -- including the United States and Germany -- the West still spends only roughly a tenth of what it did in the Balkans.

"I am really asking myself: Are we doing enough? We can't win this battle only with the military," Maj. Gen. Bruno Kasdorf, the highest-ranking German officer at ISAF headquarters in Kabul, said in an interview with German news magazine Stern.

Yet while all experts agree that Afghanistan needs more troops and more money, Western governments have so far refused to significantly boost their commitment. Not making bold decisions now may be more costly in the long run, however, experts say.

"We are at a watershed point," Schreer said. "If we continue with the same old strategy, the whole mission will fail."

That would spell disaster not only for Afghanistan, but also for NATO and ultimately the West.

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