There is now no hiding the fact that the entire international mission in Afghanistan seriously lost its way years ago.

This is clear from the current policy struggles among NATO allies, including the Obama administration's groping attempt to come up with what's diplomatically being called a "fresh approach."

The problem here is not just a military matter, and the addition of still more U.S. troops, which the Pentagon is asking for, might improve only part of the overall mission.

What's urgently needed is an answer to the two key questions that have haunted the Western mission almost since its inception eight years ago: Who's in charge and where are we going?

Battle scarred, Canadian Col. Ian Hope, shown here following a fierce 2006 battle with the Taliban, is one of those calling loudly for a clear, unified command. (Les Perreaux/Canadian Press)

On the development front, international assistance is still largely uncoordinated, with dozens of foreign governments and volunteer groups following their own plans and, too often, undercutting the authority of the Afghan government by claiming the credit for any good works.

Meanwhile, a dizzying hodgepodge of military efforts is split between two — yes two — parallel commands: the mainly U.S. Operation Enduring Freedom and the larger U.S./NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, which, to confuse matters still further, is "UN-mandated."

Continents away

It wasn't until last October that Washington finally moved to unify all U.S. and allied forces under one commander, currently four-star Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

However, the commands of individual nations such as Canada still bear enormous influence. What's more, McChrystal must also answer to different masters, half a world apart.

In this case, that means the giant U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) based in Tampa, Fla., which covers 20 nations, including Iraq and Afghanistan. That is a region of 520 million people from Egypt in the West to Pakistan in the East, and from Kazakhstan in the North to Somalia in the South.

And, because McChrystal is also the NATO commander in Afghanistan, he must report to the alliance's European Command in Brunssum, Holland.

This means dealing with European members, some of whom often resist unified tactics such as counter-insurgency efforts, let alone a single Afghanistan strategy.

Command confusion

Perhaps because all this parallel command is so complex, it has received relatively little media attention. However, the problem can't be exaggerated.

As retired U.S. colonel David Lamm, a former chief of staff to NATO/ISAF in Kabul, has written: "If you handed the Taliban a sheet of paper and said draw a diagram and organizational structure that could really make the foreign commander's job a hard and difficult one, they would have essentially written this (structure)."

Among the most frustrated NATO officers are Canadian ones, some of whom have been warning of command confusion for half a decade.

One of the most strident is Col. Ian Hope whose words carry special weight because he is viewed in many NATO circles as a leading military intellectual and one of the sharpest strategic minds to come out of the war.

In a sharp critique of the command problems written for the U.S. Army War College last November, Hope opened with a characteristically blunt warning: "In Afghanistan today, want of moral singleness, simplicity and intensity of purpose harp of military failure."

The colonel writes from wide experience. He not only commanded the Canadian battalion in fierce fighting in Kandahar in 2006, he served with both the U.S. army and Afghan government as a strategic planner as well as with CENTCOM in Florida as a Canadian liaison officer.

Hope argues that the strength of U.S. military operations historically has been based on the idea of unity of command, the notion that every important decision flows from one central authority, one ultimate commander's desk.

It was the principle exemplified in the First and Second World War but the very one not followed in Afghanistan. Or Vietnam!

Shotgun style

Col. Hope's name keeps reappearing these days because he was an architect of one of the few clear strategic plans ever presented for Afghanistan.

In 2004, he helped the Canadian ISAF commander, then general Rick Hillier, draw up a roadmap to move Afghanistan towards a sustainable future.

It argued for one clear and harmonized strategy, under one central command structure, to which the international community and the Afghanistan government could commit to.

If adopted, it would have avoided the shotgun-style approach that still dominates this bits-and-pieces war.

However, "this first approach to integration was rebuffed not only by NATO but also by Hillier's own (Canadian) national authorities, for whom the 'whole of government approach' had (in 2005) not moved much beyond a marketing slogan," recalls another Canadian veteran, Col. George Petrolekas, in a recent essay.

Petrolekas has argued that other NATO countries have no right to lay all the blame for command disunity on the U.S. as all countries failed to develop a consensus on why they were in Afghanistan or what they hoped to achieve.

With public support for the fight in Afghanistan declining sharply these days, not just in the U.S. but across almost all NATO countries, there's some doubt the allies even have the time to develop one overarching strategy to help Afghanistan move from the razor's edge.

When Canadian officers reflect on the years of grinding effort in Afghanistan, during which the Taliban grew in influence and the central government there remained weak, some quote the great Chinese master on military art, Sun Tzu: "Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."