He breathes roughly through a pipe in his trachea and has tubes in his stomach and bladder as well as a bulky pins through a fractured leg.

"If he is not taken care of quickly in intensive care, he will die in a month from dehydration and infection," says the head of a medical post staffed by French doctors about 50 kilometres (30 miles) northeast of Kabul.

Fabien C., whose full name cannot be used for security reasons, is the chief doctor in a battalion of French Alpine troops sent to the mountainous province of Kapisa in December with 700 soldiers from France.

The doctor has a busy morning at his field hospital in prefabricated units at the Nijrab base, used by Afghan, French and US soldiers united in the fight against the Taliban-led insurgency.

Didar, 33, was brought by relatives to the gates of the fortified camp.

"His family came in the hope that we would remove his urinary tube, his tracheotomy tube, the nasal-gastric pipe and his external fixator," the doctor says. The fixator is the brace fitted to the patient's broken leg.

Those who brought him say he was operated on in Iran two months earlier but has not seen a doctor since.

Medics decide Didar must be evacuated to the military hospital at Bagram, the large US military base about 40 kilometres to the east. It could be his last chance.

It is also privileged access to top-class medical care in a country with one of the world's lowest life expectancies (early 40s) and highest infant mortality rates (about 130 out of 1,000 live births).

Strides have been made in improving health care in Afghanistan since the Taliban government was removed in the 2001 US-led invasion.

About 85 percent of people had access to basic health services in 2007 -- up from nine percent in 2003, according to government figures.

The medical teams in the NATO-led military deployment to Afghanistan have among the most sophisticated facilities in the country.

They treat their own soldiers but in some areas also take in Afghan patients in a drive to show locals that international troops can bring benefits and not just destruction and casualties of war.

In December and January, Fabien C. and his team saw 629 Afghans, including some who were shot. "This is the medicine of war," says the young doctor.

The specialist battalion of mountain troops sent to this part of the imposing Hindu Kush are also busy on the fighting front, with three significant engagements since their arrival in December.

The worst was on February 6, when it took three and half hours to rescue about 50 Afghan soldiers under fire from militants. One Afghan and seven rebels were killed, the French military says.

The troops' ability to operate in the mountain terrain was a key factor in the success, with 150 men able to climb onto a ridge above the battle, trapping the militants below, says the head of the battalion, Colonel Nicolas Le Nen.

"The real value of the Alpine troops is that we think about our manoeuvres on a three-dimensional terrain, in the same way as our enemy," he says.

Their deployment alongside US Marines tests the ability of soldiers from nations that were at loggerheads over the war in Iraq to work together.

And it is working well, says Lieutenant Colonel Sean Wester, one of around a dozen Marines on base with 450 French soldiers.

"What I discovered is that, tactically and operationally, we think very much alike," he said. "This location is a fine example of how well we work together and how well we can continue to work together."

At scores of other bases across the country, soldiers from around 40 nations are in similar circumstances in the 56,000-strong International Security Assistance Force, NATO's most ambitions military venture.

Back at the field hospital in snowy Nijrab, the medical team is attending to two other patients.

There is Zekro, a four-year-old boy who clutches a stuffed toy animal as he is treated for leishmaniasis, a parasitic skin condition that has formed a deep open wound on one of his temples.

Next to him is a teenager whose skull is covered in scars from ringworm. The staff shampoo his head before covering his hair with cream and adding a plaster hat.

"These are the kinds of clinical cases we saw maybe 200 to 300 years ago in France," says the doctor. "Here the biggest problem is hygiene."

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