The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would face a tough time in Afghanistan's insurgency-plagued southern provinces as Taliban's fanatic movement vowed to speed up offenses in the coming spring.

Taliban's purported spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmadi in his recent contact to media warned that militants would increase their attacks on foreign troops when the weather got warm in spring.

NATO has decided to boost its military strengthen up to 15,000 by spring this year, as part of its commitment to help Afghanistan's central government is to ensure its gripe in the far-flanged countryside.

The 26-member-state western military alliance currently is commanding a 9,200-stong International Security Assistance Force ( ISAF) in the post-Taliban nation with majority of them stationed in Kabul to stabilize security in the ruined capital.

Britain as a lead nation in boosting the alliance forces in Afghanistan has contributed 4,150 fresh troops to Afghanistan.

Dutch parliament has also approved deploying 1,400 reinforcing soldiers to the country while the Scandinavian state of Denmark would double its military presence from 180 to 360 soldiers in the coming months.

Dutch's forces will be stationed in the troubled Uruzgan, the home province of Taliban's elusive leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

Uruzgan and the neighboring provinces of Helmand, Kandahar and Zabul, commonly known as the hotbed of Taliban, has been the scene of increasing militancy since early 2005, during which over 1,500 people including the rebels, Afghan and U.S. troops as well as aid workers and pro-government social and religious figures were killed.

The Taliban-led militancy has also claimed the lives of some 100 people including four American soldiers since the beginning of this year.

Remnants of the former regime, in a new strategy to spread panic among the locals, have resorted to suicide attacks and targeted educational institutions as 19 suicide bombings have been registered since mid last year while nine schools have been torched over the past two months.

Taliban's core commander Mullah Dadullah said late last year that about 200 suicide attackers had been ready to carry out activities.

While the weather is getting warm and the spring season is drawing closer, the commander-in-chief of the 20,000-strong U.S.- led coalition forces in Afghanistan on Tuesday predicted more Taliban attacks in the coming months.

"We do anticipate there will be more fighting in the months ahead. The enemy would increasingly resort to atrocities in an effort to attack the will of Afghan people and the international partners to rubber the extra-ordinary gains that have been made over the past four years," General Karl Ekinberry told his soldiers at a change of command ceremony in Bagram, the Headquarters of coalition troops.

A day earlier, according to local media, U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan James Yonts confessed to coalition's problem in rooting out the Taliban and al-Qaida loyalists through military means.

"No military solution to terrorism," Kabul-based independent daily the Cheragh in its Tuesday's issue quoted the spokesman as saying.

To boost war on militants in Afghanistan, U.S. Secretary for Defense Donald Rumsfeld told the Congress last week that Pentagon would seek more funds to pursue war on terrorism.

Military operations in Iraq, according to the defense secretary, are costing the United States around 5.9 billion U.S. dollars a month and another 1.9 billion U.S. dollars in Afghanistan.

The United States, according to Pentagon has lost 215 of its troops, 129 of them in Afghanistan, since launching the operation Enduring Freedom on October 2001, which led to the collapse of Taliban regime in late 2001.

Some 80 of these troopers lost their lives in combat operations in 2005, the deadliest year for American military in the post- Taliban nation.

Burden of the war cost on the United States, reluctance of some NATO states to fight militants in the southern region, intensifying Taliban-led militancy speak of complexity in Afghan security situation.

German Defense Minister Peter Struck in informal meeting with NATO's counterparts including Donald Rumsfeld in Romania in October 2004 said NATO's mandate in Afghanistan was to stabilize the country and not to fight international terrorism.

Ayman-al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaida's second-in-command, in his recent statement last month hailed Taliban for enhancing attacks against Afghan and U.S.-dominated foreign troops.

Another al-Qaida leader Abu Laith al-Libi also admitted to joining Taliban in the ongoing insurgency.

"We, members of al-Qaida organization are currently waging Jihad (holy war) in Afghanistan alongside our brethren from Taliban," Libi said in a recent audiotape posted on internet.

NATO's fractious stance over fight on terror, Taliban's determination to continue Jihad till last and increasing security incidents particularly in the south all speak of daunting challenges lying ahead of the western military alliance in Afghanistan.

Source: Xinhua