NATO Faces Mounting Taliban Challenge.

The NATO command needs up to 2,500 extra soldiers to be sent to Afghanistan, where the alliance faces an increasingly strengthened Taliban movement trying to re-take power in Kabul. General James Jones, NATO's supreme allied commander Europe, recently said he urgently needed a reserve battalion of about 1,000 soldiers plus air support involving up to 1,500 more in the wake of the unexpectedly tough fighting in Afghanistan. The NATO response force is scheduled to be declared fully operational next month - but Gen Jones said it was still significantly under-resourced.

A Taliban suicide bomber killed the governor of the eastern province of Paktika, striking as he emerged from his office in the provincial capital of Gardez, killing his secretary and his nephew. Three others were wounded in the attack outside Governor Abdul Hakim Taniwal's house in Gardez. The attack was the latest outside the traditional Taliban heartland of southern Afghanistan and came as a US military official warned that a suicide bombing cell was operating in Kabul, targeting foreign troops - to coincide with the fifth anniversary of 9/11.

US spokesman in Kabul Col Tom Collins on Sept. 10 said: "Through our intelligence sources we know there's a cell here in Kabul, at least one, whose primary mission is to seek coalition or international troops and hit them with suicide bombs". On Sept. 8, two US soldiers and at least 14 Afghan civilians were killed by a suicide bomber in the worst attack to hit the Afghan capital in recent years, four days after a British soldier and four civilians were killed.

Joanna Nathan, senior analyst for the International Crisis Group (ICG), said: "The Taliban are showing that they can operate anywhere at will, even in highly secured areas". The suicide attack in Paktika was a blow for the province, which has been one of better governed areas of the country, and showed how Taliban fighters are broadening their reach beyond the four southern provinces which are in the grips of fierce guerrilla war. Over 500 Taliban fighters have been killed in the past two weeks in southern Afghanistan as part of Operation Medusa, a bid by NATO to push the Taliban out of Panjwai area on the outskirts of Kandahar.

The Christian Science Monitor on Sept. 8 quoted Canadian Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor as saying: It was "impossible to defeat the Taliban militarily". The Toronto Star said O'Connor's remarks were confirmed by Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier in Ottawa. The Star said the comments "are certain to stun Canadians who are increasingly concerned about the rising number of Canadian casualties in Afghanistan" - 32 Canadians by then had been killed in Afghanistan since Canada joined the NATO mission there in 2002.

Hillier said: "That's never been the strategy [against the Taliban] - to defeat them militarily... We don't have to defeat them militarily. What we've got to do is build a country". He said the surest path to success was the actual reconstruction of Afghanistan. That was what the Taliban feared most, he said. But he conceded Taliban forces were waging battles which were slowing the reconstruction process.

"Things are not moving as quickly as we want", Hillier said, adding: "[There is] no question that the security situation has constrained that". Minister O'Connor said would raise the issue of sharing Canada's Afghan burden at a NATO defence ministers meeting in Slovenia from Sept. 28.

NATO's top commander Jones backed O'Connor's view that other countries must contribute more. Canadian forces make up about 10% of the 20,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan, but along with British and Dutch forces, they are leading the fight against the Taliban in the south. The Taliban have proven to be more tenacious and determined than expected - "being inspired" by lessons it learned during the 10-year battle against the Soviet Union.