The massive infusions of aid since the hardline Islamic regime was removed in a US-led invasion in late 2001 have led to some improvements, including an expanded education system, better health care and a freer media.

But the same progress has not been seen on the security front -- by far the most costly part of the international intervention, with tens of thousands of foreign troops deployed here and new bases built across the country.

US president-elect Barack Obama, who takes office on January 20, has vowed to boost development in Afghanistan and shift the focus of the "war on terror" from Baghdad to Kabul, with up to 30,000 new US troops due here by mid-2009.

But experts say he and Afghan President Hamid Karzai face a Herculean task, with insurgent bombings thought to have roughly doubled in number in 2008 from the previous year and civilian and military death tolls spiralling upwards.

"Although Afghan and international leaders face innumerable obstacles to success... leaders will be particularly challenged by the need to balance the rebuilding of the security forces with the demands of fighting an ongoing insurgency," wrote former interior minister Ali A. Jalali.

A key problem is that the weak Afghan army and police have been unable to provide "the space political leaders and development professionals need to initiate comprehensive state-building processes," he argued.

That challenge has been compounded by myriad problems including a weak economic base, a crumbling infrastructure and a culture of corruption, Jalali wrote in "The Future of Afghanistan", a collection of essays

Barnett R. Rubin, a leading expert on Afghanistan, wrote in the same book that Karzai's fledgling government had been undermined by the "tsunami of corruption" generated by the massive influx of foreign aid.

"There is no foreseeable trajectory under which the Afghan state will become a self-sustaining member of the international community at peace with its neighbours in the coming 10 years," Rubin predicted.

Karzai himself admits the situation is far from rosy.

"We are in a trench and our allies are with us in the trench," he told the Chicago Tribune last month, reminiscing about the "glorious success in 2002" after the Taliban was ousted, when support for his government was strong.

But since then, the number of civilians killed in military operations has soared, turning people against the "war on terror," the US-backed Afghan leader said.

Experts say Afghans have also been alienated by the government's failure to deliver on its grand promises of a better future -- largely because it is stuck in the quagmire of fighting the stubborn insurgency.

Around 70 percent of the country's population of about 30 million people live below the poverty line, said Hamidullah Tarzi, a communist-era finance minister, adding the country needs construction and jobs.

"A very minor percent can say that life has improved," he said, singling out businessmen and powerbrokers from the past decades of conflict who have secured positions of influence in the new administration.

A persistent trade in opium and heroin, worth a few billion dollars a year, is financing some of the insurgency and maintaining corrupt officials -- some of them said to be at the highest levels.

Jalali said only redoubled efforts to build capable Afghan security forces would bring the country out of the "downward spiral" referred to in a draft US National Intelligence Estimate last year, with development alone not enough to win over militia commanders, drugs traffickers and corrupt officials.

US-led efforts to train and equip the Afghan army have picked up pace, churning out about 2,500 men a month, although similar efforts to grow the police have lagged under a European mission.

But the government here is ambivalent about the arrival of new US troops, saying the money would be better spent on developing Afghanistan's own forces.

The new forces could help to "push the Taliban back a little" to pressure them into accepting the government's offer of talks, said Ahmad Idrees Rahmani, director of Afghanistan's Centre for Research and Policy Studies.

Rahmani said that presidential elections due this year are as critical to stability as the fight against insurgents.

"Over the last six, seven years, the biggest challenge for the international community in Afghanistan was to convince most of the power-brokers that there is only one legitimate mechanism to hold power," he said.

Failure to go ahead with the vote could see warlords try to muscle their way back into power with the excuse that the new order does not work, he warned -- a replay of the 1990s civil war that destroyed the capital.

Homayun Hamidzada, Karzai's spokesman, said there could be progress if the militants were brought to heel, especially by cutting off their support lines in neighbouring Pakistan, and if Afghan institutions are allowed to mature.

"There are problems, yes -- our institutions are weak, there is corruption, there is a lack of capacity, less coordination," he said.

"But if you take a look at the larger graph, the trend is going up."

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