Changing the perception

Critics, however, noted that Obama's troop surge falls 10,000 troops short of top U.S. Commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal's earlier recommendation of 40,000 troops.

Weitz noted that while some Republicans have grumbled about those numbers, the president plans to fill that gap with NATO allies and later with Afghan forces.

Still, Europe's public is unenthusiastic about deploying more soldiers to Afghanistan, which leaves European allies stuck between their constituents on one side and their U.S. ally on the other, he said.

Only British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has pledged to deploy a few hundred additional troops to Afghanistan, he noted.

Nathan Hughes, military analyst at Stratfor, a global intelligence company, said the surge is still too small to impose a military solution in a vast country with a widely dispersed population.

But the surge is not about defeating the Taliban, rather it is about changing the perception of the players involved and gaining back the initiative so Afghan forces can take over, he said.

And in a country where players often switch sides in hopes of ending up on the winning team -- indeed, many Afghans are beginning to identify with the Taliban because they believe that organization is in control -- perception counts a great deal.

Old challenges

Aside from challenges facing the new strategy, a number of older ones remain.

Obama's goal of protecting the population is intended to win hearts and minds in a bid to deprive the Taliban of popular support, but that poses some difficulty, even with the additional forces.

U.S. and British troops have complained that Taliban fighters tend to melt away when foreign forces appear, only to reappear after they leave, killing villagers who provided foreign troops with intelligence and other assistance.

Payne said the surge will partially solve that problem, as troops will focus on hotspots of Taliban activity.

Another challenge will be reintegrating guerrillas into society. Administration officials said Obama wants to reach out to groups fighting alongside the Taliban -- those who are not hard-core extremists -- and offer a greater role in governance.

But Hughes said Washington has little understanding of which factions are open to compromise and will have difficulty navigating through the labyrinth of competing loyalties and agendas of the country's tribes and warlords.

Many experts also said U.S. attempts to impose a central government could fail in a country where centralized democracy is an alien concept.

Analysts note that Afghanistan is no Iraq, which sits on a mountain of oil wealth and has a history of central governance.

In contrast, Afghanistan is one of the world's poorest countries, lacks basic infrastructure and has no history of governance by a central authority.