WASHINGTON: As President Obama prepares to send troops to war for the first time as commander in chief, a new report says a "game-changing" strategy is urgently needed in Afghanistan.

An inability to enact long-term goals and poor coordination among the US and coalition partners tasked with improving security have restricted the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan, says a new report.

"All is not lost in Afghanistan," the experts said in a paper released Tuesday by the congressionally funded United States Institute of Peace.

"But urgent measures - what might be called 'game-changing steps' - are now needed to stem an increasingly violent insurgency," said authors Seth Jones and C. Christine Fair.

"It is unlikely the United States and NATO will defeat the Taleban and other insurgent groups in Afghanistan," the report said, "so any additional troops sent should be used to mentor Afghan security forces on how to control the country themselves."

The report comes as the Obama administration prepares to roll out a new counterinsurgency that coincides with the deployment of as many as 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan over the next year to 18 months.

Obama has been reviewing several options that he and commanders want in Afghanistan. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday that Obama will make the decision shortly about how many more troops to send.

Beth Cole, director of USIP's Afghanistan security project, said the report was commissioned "because no one, even in the White House, had a handle on what all the programs are."

The Washington-based think tank's report adds to the growing consensus among officials and private analysts that sending more troops to the now 7-year-old war will mean little without a new strategy.

Concerns highlighted in the report include the failure to disarm and integrate warlords and their private militias, lagging justice-system reforms to strengthen law enforcement and root out corruption and a near absence of resources to fortify porous border areas plied by militants and narco-traffickers.

"Afghanistan's government is struggling for legitimacy, and it cannot achieve that goal without being able to provide a sustainable security environment on its own," writes author Seth Jones, a security specialist. "That is the single most significant concern in the long run."

The report is also critical of NATO's "inability" to deliver adequate mentoring for the Afghan army and police forces under a coherent policy with clear goals and measurements, citing a lack of commitment from European partners and a continuing shift of responsibility among US agencies.

As part of the analysis, the authors set out to review the tens of billions of dollars in development assistance to Afghanistan offered by scores of countries and international organizations over the last seven years. The effort sought to compare these commitments to the benchmarks of success identified in the 2006 Afghanistan Compact. Fair and Jones were surprised to find, however, that no comprehensive data on progress toward the benchmarks exist, nor is there reliable information on the total amount of resources actually contributed by donor countries. The report says a lack of focus on long-term sustainability, an inability to map the entirety of donor nations' security assistance programs and the subsequent failure on the part of the international community to understand precisely what is needed in Afghanistan are among the leading reasons why international stabilization efforts in the country have not been more successful over the last seven years, says a new report from the United States Institute of Peace.

Other top reasons include:

- a failure to see security as inclusive of rule of law institutions;

- an inability to deliver adequate mentoring for both army, police and justice personnel;

- a lack of understanding of the differing threats and networks operating in and across the borders of Afghanistan;

- poor or little coordination on security assistance among donor countries;

- a lack of political will among Afghan leaders to prosecute major criminal activity.

To get back on track, the report recommends a "crash effort" to mentor and fund security programs, arguing that incoming US forces will be helpful only if they can build up Afghan capacity and protect local populations.

The report, Securing Afghanistan, is the result of a 12 -month investigation that sought to identify specific weaknesses in domestic and international efforts to stabilize Afghanistan and recommend specific reforms in the security sector.