An Afghan officer, NATO behind him, leads an assault

Complicating a decisive response in Afghanistan has been the shape of the NATO coalition. It has often failed to coordinate sufficiently, critics say, to stop an enemy that is estimated to be perhaps a sixth of the coalition size. Forty nations have contributed to a force of 61,000, including the American contingent as well as 28,000 other NATO troops.

Indeed, US military officers here often say that the US and its coalition allies haven't been in Afghanistan for seven years, but for one year – seven times. It's a nod to the sentiment that the coalition keeps reinventing the wheel in the troubled country.

Many express hope that fresh thinking about training may move the Afghan Army forward more aggressively. For now, a key driver in Afghan operations here are members of the Operational Mentoring and Liaison Teams, training teams that have evolved in recent years along with the broader mission. The teams are led by commanders like Maj. Bob Ritchie, who's in charge of the Canadian team in Zhari.

Spurred in part by Canadian voters still at odds over the mission in Afghanistan, senior Canadian officials here say they have begun the transition from security-oriented operations in which they do the heavy lifting toward a greater emphasis on Afghan responsibility.

The recent NATO summit in Bucharest included France's formal announcement that it would send more troops and other commitments from additional countries.

Meanwhile, the arrival of the US Marines in the south, and the promise of more American forces to come by 2009, assuaged the Canadians, who had threatened to pull out of the mission if reinforcements weren't sent.

There remains, however, a critical need for dozens more training teams, say NATO officials.

Logistical shortcomings

Critics say the approach to training here under the embedded training teams is still uneven. Despite efforts to ensure uniformity across the training teams, each of the militaries nonetheless approaches mentoring from different perspectives. And US officers who have spent time here say there is little effort to share information, or in military parlance, spread "lessons learned" based on each teams' experiences. "Everyone does something a little different," says one Canadian officer.

The Afghan Army, for example, still is not able to perform many logistical functions like using its nascent intelligence service, fully planning a mission, or providing its ground forces the air support it needs. The intelligence that comes from the Afghan service, for example, can fall prey to political vendettas as Army or police commanders settle debts by politicizing what they put out.

Still, in the middle of a hodgepodge of foreign forces, the Afghan National Army has quietly grown more capable. Coalition forces say part of their job is to make that point to average Afghans – instilling a confidence in them that their national Army is up to the task.

That means making more of an effort to put an "Afghan face" on the fight against the Taliban and other militias.

Needed: good commanders

More than 30 years of war have deprived Afghanistan of many good military commanders. With a 20 percent national literacy rate, little materiel, and lack of professional training, even the good ones can't function at a high level. Afghan fighters' ability to famously beat back their Russian invaders in the 1980s only came with weapons and other support provided covertly by the US and other allies.

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