The group includes the governor and mayor of the western city of Herat, UN officials and military officers from the provincial reconstruction team (PRT) run by NATO soldiers, who in this western province are mostly Italian.

In Herat as elsewhere, they are trying to install governance, improve security, and wrest back the initiative from Taliban insurgents whose net is widening across a country ranked fifth poorest in the world.

The conventional wisdom of counter-insurgency warfare is that improving the lives of locals is vital to cultivating lasting stability and depriving insurgents of breeding grounds to regroup.

But a UN representative at the meeting says that donor governments and agencies often work independently, unaware of what others are doing and uninterested in linking into national development priorities.

The short international troop rotations, sometimes only four to six months, means soldiers are constantly going back to basics and focusing on short-term projects, like building wells and schools, others say.

"It takes three months to understand the complications of this country (and then) your successor starts the exercise all over again," Herat governor Ahmad Yusef Nuristani explains to the Italian commanders.

But the overarching concern -- raised by all -- is insecurity, which in this relatively calm western-most province has as much to do with smugglers and kidnappers as Taliban and other Islamic insurgents.

Afghanistan's provincial reconstruction teams Provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs) are small teams of civilian and military staff working in Afghanistan to provide security for aid workers and help with reconstruction. They fall under the UN-mandated and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which entered Afghanistan after the extremist Taliban government was removed by a US-led invasion in late 2001. There are 26 PRTs across the country, although none in the capital, with the first set up in 2002, according to ISAF. Twelve are headed by the United States and two by Germany. Other nations that have adopted a PRT are: Britain, Canada, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands and Turkey. The objectives of the PRTs include: + supporting the government in the development of a more stable and secure environment + assisting in extending the authority of the government + facilitating reconstruction and development Much of their work, including "quick impact projects," is intended to win over public support for the presence of international troops, which are helping the Afghan government fight a Taliban-led insurgency and lawlessness. Development projects can range from distributing books and footballs, to building wells, bridges, libraries and schools. Since 2002, PRTs countrywide have completed 9,999 projects costing about 464 million dollars, according to ISAF data. Another 3,611 projects worth 795 million dollars are ongoing and 1,127 projects worth 513 million dollars are planned. "It's a very peculiar asset, which was established for Afghanistan because that needed, because of the nature of the conflict, a very special approach," said Rear Admiral Matthieu Borsboom, ISAF commander in charge of "stability." The aim is to "bring some of the reconstruction and development and governance building in those areas where it was too insecure for the other partners, the normal partners, who would be delivering those," he told AFP. The plan is that the military component will give way to the civilian one as the situation becomes more stable, the Dutch commander said. "The end state should be that it is all civilians and then... transferred into the standard all-out civilian development partner," he said.

Rear Admiral Matthieu Borsboom, who is in charge of the PRTs, has come from the Kabul headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to listen and motivate followers to a more comprehensive approach.

ISAF runs 26 PRTs, responsible for the multinational force development work that runs concurrent to its military campaign against insurgents.

The focus has been on "quick impact projects," such as handing out books or building a school, to win public support for foreign troops increasingly under fire over civilians killed and property damaged in battles against rebels.

Borsboom talks of a "revolutionary step" which abandons attempts to coordinate ISAF, government and UN development plans, but would draw up one district-level blueprint from the outset.

Pilot projects are expected to start in the coming months.

"The challenges are huge," says the Dutch commander. "All three partners themselves are not perfect and the outside world is too complex. We have to do it together."

The new US administration has shifted the focus in the "war on terror" to Afghanistan and called for a broad strategy combining diplomacy, development and defence to root out Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and extremists.

Hopes in 2001 of a fast-ticket to the 21st century have dissolved as the vast majority of Afghans have seen little tangible aid, with a resurgent Taliban exploiting the bitterness.

According to ISAF data, PRTs have completed 9,999 projects worth nearly 464 million dollars since 2002. Around another 4,740 projects costing 592 million dollars are ongoing or planned.

"You have to show (results) to the population, who have had war for 25 years," says Borsboom after a tour of projects -- furniture for a new burns clinic, a school for orphaned boys, art classes from an Italian master.

"If they don't see a change, for them it is hard to choose a side... they have to survive."

But there are many critics. The government, which the West accuses of rampant corruption, says it could carry out development work more cheaply, and wants international aid to feed through the national budget.

Aid workers say blurring the line with foreign troops comprises their neutrality and puts them in danger.

There are also long-term questions about creating a culture of dependency among locals, and over the military's understanding of good development practice.

These are some of the questions ISAF commanders grapple with back at Camp Arena, their main base in Herat.

For example, giving free medical assistance to more than 26,800 Afghans in the western provinces in 2008 was good for the image of the force, they say.

But there fears this could threaten Afghan doctors who depend on patient fees and cannot afford to provide free medicine.

"Is this helping to build the Afghan system or helping to break it down?" Borsboom asks.

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