This Enemy is Media Friendly and Has a Bewildering Array of Allies and Rivals

Within hours of the news breaking of the ambush of French soldiers on Monday, text messages arrived on reporters' mobile phones in Kabul. From Zahibullah Mujahed, a Taliban spokesman, they boasted of the defeat of the "invader forces". Nato spokesmen in the city took much longer to issue a statement.

One problem, they said, was the difficulty in identifying exactly who had attacked the French troops. Most reports, including the statements by Mujahed, described the attackers as Taliban.

In fact they were probably fighters from the Hezb-i-Islami group led by veteran Islamist warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, for whom the plateaux and gorges around the scruffy town of Sorobi have been a stronghold since the Soviet occupation.

The confusion over the identity of those responsible for the biggest loss of Nato soldiers in a single incident in Afghanistan since 2005 mirrors wider uncertainty about the identity of the shadowy enemy being fought in this country.

Analysts from the 40-nation, US-led coalition are realizing that the insurgency is much more complicated than they had thought. Hundreds, if not thousands of groups are ranged into a complex and shifting pattern of alliances of interest. Groups fight the coalition, and contest each other's authority and influence. Their nature also varies enormously.

"It is probably better to talk about insurgencies than an insurgency," said one specialist with the United Nations in Kabul. "Some of these groups are just six guys and they hate the six guys from the next village."

Local people have long been aware of this. At a community level, the names of local Taliban commanders are well known and few are unaware of the complex local power struggles that led one minor warlord to fight while another stays neutral or sides with the government.

Degrees of ideological commitment differ. Interviews conducted through intermediaries with the Taliban reveal that older commanders, many of whom fought the Soviets, often see the current situation as the latest phase in a long and chaotic power struggle. But a younger generation is more influenced by the jihadi or takfiri hardline ideology closer to that of al-Qaida and see their struggle as part of a global war against the west.

Overlaying this web of allegiances, calculation of interest, and ideological and generational difference are lines of loyalty to men such as Hekmatyar in the north-east, the clan of veteran warlord Jalalauddin Haqqani in the east and to the core of the Taliban who seized power in 1996 and are now based in Pakistan.

Even the last are by no means united. Western and Afghan intelligence sources in Kabul describe feuds and disputes over strategy and ideology among the Taliban higher command. There are fierce arguments over the justification of suicide bombing or attacks on aid workers. One commander, interviewed indirectly, said he condemned killing Afghans. Another justified the deaths of "hypocrite collaborators".

A further complicating factor is the involvement of criminals and teenage gangs. In some instances, Taliban senior commanders offer money for successful attacks on coalition or government forces.

"It is very organized. You send someone to Quetta [the western Pakistan city] to find out what is needed, you agree a price, you attack the convoy or police station or blow up the bridge or whatever. They send someone to verify the damage and then they pay you," said Roshanak Wardak, a member of parliament.

The Taliban have succeeded in giving an impression of unity - an important psychological advantage. One recent post on their website revealed a neat organogram of their organization, with relevant committees for media and military operations, care of the families of "martyrs", fatwas and external relations. And their media machine works.

"They are extremely good at communication," said Mohammed Masoom Stanikzai, an adviser to President Karzai and vice-chairman of Afghanistan's reconciliation committee, set up to win over wavering Taliban fighters. "When they make promises, they deliver." The value of spectacular attacks, such as those earlier this year which liberated hundreds of detainees from Kandahar prison or on the Serena luxury hotel in Kabul, is also well understood.

Two key questions are how linked the insurgents are to the drugs trade and to what extent the Taliban are composed of "foreigners".

Again, the situation differs across the country. In the southern Helmand and Kandahar provinces, where the most opium is grown, there are strong informal links between militants, corrupt officials and drug traffickers. "They all have a common interest in disorder,' said Christina Oguz, Kabul representative of the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime. Often the Taliban levy on opium the traditional 10% tax on agricultural products. In the east, the link with narcotics is more tenuous.

In the south, too, the proportion of "foreigners" is higher. Many fighters flow in from Pakistan, some even from the eastern Punjab province, which does not share the Pashtun ethnicity of the bulk of Afghan Taliban fighters. One 22-year-old from the eastern Pakistan town of Bahawalpur interviewed in Afghan detention, said last week he had been groomed for a suicide attack in a religious school across the border before being captured.

There are also indications that the significant numbers of Afghan battlefield commanders killed by coalition forces are being replaced by Pakistanis, who appear more extreme, though the lower ranks and the high command remain predominantly Afghan.

Thrown into this explosive mixture too is al-Qaida which fulfills, according to several intelligence sources in Kabul, a "facilitating, logistics, advisory" role to certain groups including the main leadership of the Taliban. Freelance militants are arriving in Afghanistan from elsewhere in the Islamic world, even Iraq, the sources say.

One key lesson learned by the insurgents is that a tactical defeat can be turned into a strategic victory if it is followed up by more attacks and a clever media strategy.

"The more martyrs we have and the more we attack over the bodies of our martyrs the more we will be feared," said one Taliban commander.