Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice conceded over the weekend the Taliban has in recent months demonstrated a tenacity unseen since the U.S.-led 2001 invasion that toppled the regime in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks for harboring al-Qaida operatives.

"Of course they're going to fight back, even if they're on the ropes," she told Fox News Sunday. "And yes, they came back somewhat more organized and somewhat more capable than people would have expected."

NATO officials report that more than 420 Taliban militants were killed in the past nine days alone during heavy fighting the in southern Kandahar province, a militant stronghold, where some 20,000 multinational troops are deployed.

Vice President Dick Cheney also sought to downplay the insurgency, noting that al-Qaida training camps in the country were razed at the Taliban's ouster. "There were training camps in Afghanistan, training thousands of al-Qaida terrorists," he said on Meet the Press. "All those training camps today are shut down."

But Osama bin Laden and his minions are believed to be in hiding in the lawless tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistani border. And the Taliban has rearmed and regrouped in southern and eastern provinces sparking pitched battles that have killed more than 100 American and NATO soldiers in the past nine months. This amounts to roughly twice the number of dead over the same period last year.

Two of those U.S. servicemen died in a brazen suicide bombing Friday near the U.S. embassy in Kabul, which killed at least 14 Afghan civilians and burst the notion the seat of President Hamid Karzai's embattled government is an oasis of security when compared to the rest of the country.

A Taliban spokesman later claimed responsibility for the attack, and U.S. military intelligence disclosed knowledge of a Kabul-based cell whose "primary mission is to seek coalition or international troops and hit them with suicide bombs."

Observers say these tactics have been lifted from the playbook of the Iraqi insurgency. Suicide bombings were a rare phenomenon a year ago; this year over 70 attacks have been recorded and roadside bombings have doubled, many employing remote detonated technologies with increasingly lethal success.

Another suicide bombing killed the governor of Paktia province, Hakim Taniwal, and two companions on Sunday, with other strikes reported elsewhere.

NATO's top commander, U.S. Gen. James Jones, visited Kabul last week and said he was stunned by the "level of intensity" of Taliban aggression since the July handover of nationwide security operations. The United States reduced its troop presence by about 6,500 over the summer, but Jones has called for NATO reinforcements and greater air support in light of the fierce Taliban challenge.

Of the clashes between NATO forces and insurgents, Brig. Gen. Ed Butler, the top British commander in Afghanistan Friday said, "The intensity and ferocity of the fighting is far greater than in Iraq on a daily basis."

Critics say U.S. diversion in the Iraqi quagmire has stunted reconstruction and security boosting efforts that have caused Afghanis to lose faith in the government. The absence of basic public services and economic opportunities in impoverished rural areas, they say, has made villagers more vulnerable to the Taliban's heavy-handed advances.

"Afghanistan has an extremely weak government," said Marina Ottaway, an Afghan expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, adding it will not be able to do enough for the such a large country "in the foreseeable future," without massive aid from the international community.

The U.S., meanwhile, has cut aid to Afghanistan this year by 30 percent at time Afghan officials say military spending is ten times that of developmental aid.

The Taliban comeback is also due in part to its capacity to pay more, according to the U.S. military. Taliban fighters earn $8 a day, compared to about $4 a day for Afghan Army soldiers and $2 a day for national police.

The lion's share of the Taliban war chest comes from a record opium harvest, set to increase by nearly 60 percent this year, according to a new U.N. report. Officials say drug profits are fueling the Taliban, which has formed an alliance with traffickers while allowing farmers to cultivate opium poppies -- the raw material of heroin -- in restive provinces.

By some estimates, the drug trade now accounts for between 35 and 50 percent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product.

The government and international aid agencies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to eradicate opium crops, but experts say this is a waste of time without viable alternatives.

"Even supporters of the war on drugs need to wake up," Ted Galen Carpenter, a foreign policy expert at the CATO Institute in Washington, D.C. said. "The anti-drug effort needs to be put on the backburner at least until we can fight off the Taliban."

Most observers agree the Taliban -- and al-Qaida leadership sheltered alongside them -- will never be dealt a serious blow until they are purged from the remote border regions where a lack of government authority, abundant weaponry and the prevalence of militant Islam remain major obstacles.

This task appears as daunting as ever: Afghan officials and Western intelligence analysts allege that elements within Pakistani intelligence continue to support the Taliban, placing U.S. ally President Pervez Musharraf between a rock and a hard place.

Last Tuesday the Pakistani government signed a "truce" with tribal militants in North Waziristan, as they have done before in neighboring territories, which comprise the region senior al-Qaida and Taliban leadership are believed the to have fled to during the 2001 invasion. U.S. analysts further believe the Taliban set up a base of operations 200 miles to the south in and around the city of Quetta to launch campaigns against NATO forces earlier this year.

At this juncture it appears the only way to finally achieve government control over the border regions will be through sustained development projects, not the barrel of a gun. Experts say this could have been far less difficult had the United States and its allies followed through five years ago.

"The U.S. made a mistake in diverting its attention from Afghanistan to Iraq," CATO's Carpenter said. "It needs to correct these mistakes before they do even more damage to anti-Taliban and al-Qaida efforts already waged."

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