The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) is fighting the wrong battle in Afghanistan. Tagging the war it is waging against Afghans who want to liberate their country from western occupation is a farce which, coupled with the wisdom of the Taliban fighters, is breaking the back of the most powerful military organization on earth.

The Nato is in Afghanistan to fight terrorism, which is a cover up operation targeting Muslims who are against the occupation of their homeland and against the global domination of the American empire. Washington succeeded in bringing the coalition of Nato forces to fight its private battles against Islamic elements promising an easy defeat of the Taliban. However, the planners in the Pentagon and in the White House did not count on the resilience and the tenacity of the Taliban.

The effect of the Taliban’s disappearing acts and their flight and invisibility in the battle field has makes them notorious yet popular with the populace of the country. The Afghans are actually missing the Taliban more than appreciating the presence of the Nato.

There have been 753 coalition deaths -- 478 Americans, four Australians, 87 Britons, 78 Canadians, one Czech, nine Danes, 12 Dutch, two Estonians, one Finn, 12 French, 22 Germans, 10 Italians, three Norwegians, one Pole, two Portuguese, five Romanians, one South Korean, 23 Spaniards, two Swedes -- in the war on terror as of February 1, 2008, according to a CNN count.

According to a rough count, there has been a death toll of several thousands Taliban fighters since the Americans invaded Afghanistan in 2001 but the numbers are said to be higher in the years following the return of the Talibs. In 2006-2007 alone, a rough estimate gives around 10,000 Taliban deaths in firefights with Nato forces.

In early 2007, the Nato command in Kabul and in Kandahar said they estimated the real force of the Taliban to be around 5000, among them many poorly trained farmers, drug addicts and so on. The Nato command issued several press releases in 2007 in which no less than 70 to 250 Taliban fighters are said to have been killed every time the Nato launches an attack in Afghanistan. If we make a head count of the Taliban death toll that year, we can see that almost 2500 Talibs were killed by the Nato.

Logically speaking we should have some 2500 Taliban fighters remaining in Afghanistan in 2008 and among them the core battalion of some 500 men who are always defending their leader, Mullah Omar.

All these are by Nato and American counts and yet the Nato is finding it impossible to overrun a bunch of looters and killers (as the Taliban is always depicted in the western media). For the Nato to feel the frustration of its own lies, it is fully understandable yet for it to find itself being broken down and beaten out in Afghanistan by a group of disorganized ‘criminals’, that is a totally different story.

The truth is the Taliban constitute more than 10,000 men. There are some media outlets in the western world who are not bowing to the Nato’s command and are publishing the right figures on the fields. According to some reports to be found on the Internet indeed, the Nato forces (which is currently at 29,000 in Afghanistan) is in a long struggle against hundred of thousands of Afghans.

The Taliban itself probably consists of a few thousand well trained and ready to die soldiers of Islam. Yet they have a huge reserve of Muslims from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Chechnya or the Middle East who are willing to take up arms and are apparently in Afghanistan waiting for their chance to confront the Nato forces.

After a swift victory in 2001 when the U.S. led armies invaded Afghanistan, the Nato is today a divided organization and is facing in-fighting. The French are trying to replace the Americans in the central command and would not consider any joint operations with the Nato if the French wish is not granted.

The Germans and Canadians have had their fair share of deaths in Afghanistan that they are thinking of plugging off their support for the Nato mission. A recent clash of words between the American military command and the German government is indicative of further rifts within the Nato.

A controversy over NATO's role in the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan has deepened when Germany rejected an appeal from Washington to deploy its troops in the volatile southern region of the country.

Defense Minister Franz-Josef Jung and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, rebuffed the request, and made by Defense Secretary Robert Gates in an unusually blunt letter to Berlin requesting more assistance to defeat the Taliban insurgency.

Britain, Canada and the Netherlands have provided the bulk of non-American troops in southern Afghanistan. But Dutch and Canadian officials, reflecting public opinion, have started to demand that other NATO countries send troops as well. They argue that NATO is being undermined as an institution because of the reluctance of other big countries to send troops to the south, while the alliance's ability to bring peace to this part of the country is being jeopardized.

Last month, NATO asked Germany to expand its involvement beyond the 3,200 soldiers based in the relatively peaceful northern part of the country. It asked Berlin to provide 250 combat troops as part of quick reaction force to replace Norwegian forces but the German government has not yet officially replied to the request.

The Taliban is expecting more defections or intentions to defect from the Nato while it is reinforcing its troops with greater vigor. Several NGO reports indicate that the Taliban is in fact in control of more territory in Afghanistan and is actually very near to overrun Kabul, the capital city of the battered and broken country.

Kabul may fall to the Taliban if the Nato infighting deepens. The reason for the infighting is that American troops are not really engaging the Taliban in direct fights, preferring the use of air attacks against the Islamic insurgency. The American soldiers seem to have bitten the frost in the heat of Afghanistan and is pushing the other member countries of the Nato to fight their country’s stupid war.

This is not going down well with the public opinion of the countries which has contributed soldiers to the Nato force. The divisions will surely deepen with the defeat of the Australian government in December last year. The new government has promised it will pull out its troops from Iraq and it will probably not contribute more troops for Afghanistan. This will upset the balance in the Nato forces on the terrain.

While the Nato thought fighting the poorly fed and lightly armed Taliban would be a simple game in a training field, they are now facing great headache and a possible shame that would haunt the west for ever. A Taliban revival was never on the cards for the Nato but it came like a wind that destroyed the hopes of the western world to impose their rule on a Muslim nation.

Now a possible defeat of the Nato by the Taliban is not out of question and this has sent a cold in the back of the Germans, the Canadians and soon the Australians and surely other nations. The Nato will surely never be the same after its failed ops in Afghanistan, an operation that has and is still costing the lives of thousands of innocent citizens of the country, killed by the loose cannons of the Nato.

A wrong mission in the wrong country, this is how the Nato mission can be explained. The west is once again, after several failures in Afghanistan throughout the last century, is bound to face the fate handed to the USSR by the Talibs and their former Allies, the National Front.

The situation in Afghanistan, the country from where a formidable Muslim force is said to be in the making – according to several Hadiths or traditions of the Prophet – will depend on what happens next in Pakistan. Any reversal of situation from the military control of the country to an Islamic insurgency will definitely have an impact on the role of the Taliban in the region.