BERLIN: The Afghan army and police forces, which should one day ensure the security of their country on their own, are plagued by defections and drug addiction, according to Nato commanders.

Nato defence ministers, meeting last month in Bratislava, approved a plan to focus the strategy in Afghanistan on protecting civilians from Taliban attacks while accelerating the training of Afghan security forces.

But the picture painted by Nato commanders shows that, while international troops suffer increasing casualties, training too is an uphill battle in this country wracked by more than 30 years of war.

Out of the some 94,000 Afghan soldiers trained so far, 10,000 have defected, General Egon Ramms, commander of the operational headquarters in charge of the Nato-led International Assistance Force in Afghanistan (ISAF), told reporters this week.

He also estimated that 15 per cent of the armed forces are drug addicts.

The 68,000-strong national police, one member of which shot dead five British soldiers Tuesday, suffer from the same problems, are prone to corruption, and their training has been so far less than efficient, he added.

Lieutenant Colonel John Shirras explained that in order to reach the assigned level of 134,000 Afghan troops by the end of 2010, ISAF needs to train an additional 3,000 per month.

'But out of this figure, a thousand are intended to replace troops killed or who have defected,' said the British officer, a member of Ramms' staff in the headquarters based at Brunssum in the Netherlands.

Most of the soldiers who are absent without leave (AWOL) have returned to take care of their families, Ramms added.

Even so, 'the Afghan army is by far the most efficient institution of the Afghan state', Shirras emphasized. It is a 'national army', recruited in all parts of the country and serving all over Afghanistan. Its soldiers often live for a long time away from home and sometimes give up to rejoin their families.

They pay an even heavier toll in the campaign against the Taliban than international forces, with fatalities expected to reach up to 800 this year, according to Shirras.

More than 400 foreign troops have been killed so far this year.

In order to improve the performance of the Afghan army, General Stanley McChrystal, the top US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, has adopted a new strategy called 'partnering'.

Afghan and international soldiers will now be 'training together, living together and fighting together, down to the battalion level', Shirras explained. 'If our people are in their units, they behave differently,' Ramms added.

ISAF will soon take over police training, which so far has been conducted bilaterally by national units, German or Polish for instance, leading to disparate levels of efficiency in a force that is recruited and serves locally, keeping its tribal allegiances.

In order to train the police, 'we need coordinating authority, and we need common standards,' Ramms underlined. And what is needed is 'a paramilitary police, with some civilian policing capacities', instead of a Western-like police force, he added.

The Germans for instance 'have been training policemen to help little old ladies to cross the street at the traffic light, but there are no traffic lights in Afghanistan,' said the German general.

McChrystal plans to double the size of the Afghan police within a few years. Their losses are expected to reach 1,500 killed this year, and some 10,000 of them are AWOL.

In addition the Taliban have been stealing police uniforms, weapons and even police cars, making it even more difficult to trust the real police force, Ramms said.

Coalition forces in Afghanistan, including the 71,000 strong ISAF, now top the 100,000 mark and US President Barack Obama is currently considering a large boost in US troop numbers in the face of growing public opposition in the United States.