Four soldiers were killed in eastern Afghanistan by a roadside bomb on Monday, while a separate blast near the capital, Kabul, killed four civilians.
More than 6,000 people, mostly armed, have been killed this year in attacks in Afghanistan as local and foreign forces, such as NATO, fight the Taliban.
Due to the high fatality count, some are urging NATO to reconsider its strategies in the war-torn country.
“The situation we’re seeing today is a damning indictment of the lack of political will from NATO member states to put enough boots on the ground in Afghanistan and give us a fighting chance of repelling the Taliban,” said Paul Burton, head of policy analysis at the Senlis Council, an international policy think tank.
The Senlis Council maintains there is currently a Taliban presence on more than half of Afghanistan’s landmass.
The Taliban is feeding off the lack of development in Afghanistan, Burton told The Media Line. Efforts to root out radicalism and stop the local support for the Taliban are often thwarted because of a lack of manpower and because such operations are subject to routine attacks, he explained.
“There aren’t enough people on the ground from NATO to enact this strategy properly. One has to question the operation restrictions that European NATO states place upon their forces in the country.”
NATO member states have to double troops in Afghanistan to 80,000, Burton said.
“We contend this will enable pockets of security to be established within troublesome zones, whereby stability and reconstruction can then happen.”
Burton also addressed the problem of aid delivery to impoverished areas in the south.
“We need to look at overhauling the delivery system and we’re calling on the military to deliver physical basic human necessities to those camps because the Taliban are using these as fertile recruitment ground,” he said.