Chatham House researchers said it was generally accepted that the 39,000-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had suffered from a lack of troops since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

But they said there was a "more fundamental difficulty" -- the failure to develop a "coherent approach" on how to achieve NATO and coalition objectives in Afghanistan.

In a strongly-worded briefing paper, Timo Noetzel, from Chatham House's international security team, and Sibylle Scheipers, who studies the changing character of war at Oxford University, said NATO was failing on three levels.

Instead of a comprehensive strategy, NATO had devised "partial and ad-hoc solutions" to eliminating Al-Qaeda, defeating the Taliban and helping Afghanistan become a more stable and democratic state.

Early gains were unsustainable, with the knock-on effect being Taliban fighters regrouping and filling the security vacuum, which is likely to continue as long as insurgents find a safe haven in Pakistan.

Operationally, caveats on NATO members with forces in Afghanistan were affecting efforts to counter long-term insurgency, particularly in the volatile south, where most of Britain's 7,000-strong contingent is based.

The report said individual countries' restrictions on their troops engaging in combat operations in the south for fear of troop casualties made the chances of success more unpredictable.

"This is testing the coalition's internal cohesion, which is becoming increasingly fragile," they said.

"The willingness to share risks has become a key issue. Not all NATO member states are prepared to send their forces into combat. This puts the fundamental principle of alliance solidarity on the line," it said.

Tactically, a shortage of troops has made even stability and reconstruction operations difficult, they assessed.

"Alliance and coalition forces are short of relevant capabilities... Resources to provide for operational mobility remain scarce," they added.

"The sheer lack of manpower is a growing problem. Western and Afghan forces are too thinly stretched across Afghanistan," they added, with the problem more acute in the south.

The shortfall means coalition forces cannot hold areas seized from the Taliban for long, increasing the reliance on air power that risks increasing civilian casualties, which in turn undermines NATO's legitimacy among locals.

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