An Afghan police officer leaned over a tray laden with pistachios and cubes of chilled watermelon to make his point to NATO's supreme commander.

"The enemy are attacking with machine guns and rocket launchers, and we can reply only with rifles," complained Col. Sayad Yakub Khan. "We don't have the capacity to respond."

The officer was speaking in northwestern Faryab province, which borders Turkmenistan and is relatively peaceful and prosperous, far from the Taliban's heartlands in the south where NATO units clash daily with the insurgents.

Yet even in this relatively prosperous part of Afghanistan — spared the worst of the violence — and others like it, the mission to reconstruct the war-shattered country faces a raft of problems, nearly six years after the ouster of the Taliban regime.

NATO chiefs report progress in combating a resurgent Taliban, yet an ineffective Afghan police force, spiraling drugs production and criticism of the military alliance over rising civilian deaths all present major headaches to the Western-backed mission to stabilize the country.

"It's like three-dimensional chess in a dark room, and you have gloves on," is how Gen. John Craddock — the commander of all NATO operations, including the 40,000 allied troops in Afghanistan — described NATO's task during a visit to the country last week.

Local officials praise NATO troops for helping open schools, pave roads and boosting the local economy. Yet recent months have seen a resurgence of attacks by insurgents infiltrating from the south. Targets include police posts, alliance troops and local civilians working with international development efforts, officials said.

Craddock promised NATO would stand by the local authorities and told Khan he was pressing allied governments to provide more equipment to the Afghan army and police. Getting more NATO training teams to embed with the Afghan army was his top priority, Craddock said.

Insurgent violence in Afghanistan is at its highest level since U.S. forces invaded the country in 2001 to oust the hard-line Islamic Taliban rulers, who harbored al-Qaida leaders blamed for planning the Sept. 11 attacks.

The focus of the violence has been in the southern and eastern provinces, but the insurgents increasingly use Iraq-style tactics, such as roadside bombs, suicide attacks and kidnapping to hit foreign and Afghan targets around the country.

Craddock acknowledged NATO was caught by surprise by the strength of Taliban resistance since his troops moved into the south a year ago.

"When we took over the south I don't think that we NATO, or the coalition, realized the extent of the Taliban resurgence there," he said. "There weren't many (international) forces there. That became a safe haven. NATO moved in, stirred up a hornets' nest and we're still feeling that."

He says NATO troops — mostly from Britain, Canada, the U.S. and the Netherlands — are making progress, thwarting Taliban attempts to seize control of significant territory in the south. Taliban units sometimes move into outlaying settlements in the morning and "parade around" to give the impression they control the area, Craddock said, but retreat as NATO forces approach.

"There is propaganda advantage, but there is no tactical advantage," he says.

However, commanders on the ground in southern Afghanistan say they sometimes lack the troops to consolidate successes. They complain they can chase the Taliban out of particular districts but then don't have the manpower to hold the ground.

The number of NATO troops has doubled over the past year, but that was largely because several thousand U.S. forces already in Afghanistan were transferred to NATO command. Several other NATO nations including Spain, Turkey and Germany refuse to send troops to the southern battlefields. Rising casualties and public disenchantment have triggered calls for a withdrawal among some countries on the frontline — notably Canada and the Netherlands.

Speaking privately in Kabul, several senior officials complained about shortages of troops and equipment. One British official based in Kandahar said there was a "dire need" for more helicopters. French and Italian officers wished their governments would do more.

Craddock expressed frustration at the reluctance of some countries, "who want to walk away from what I see to be a commitment." He says failure to commit the necessary forces was jeopardizing the safety of those that are deployed.

"NATO agreed to this. NATO needs to source this to the fullest extent because, without that, every soldier, every marine, every airman that they put there is at greater risk," he said.

(Courtsey: BBC Bengali service editor)