OTTAWA: Half of 17,000 men surveyed in April in southern Afghanistan "chillingly" said they believe the Taliban will triumph against NATO forces, a think tank said in a report.
Eighty percent of respondents also said they are preoccupied with trying to feed their families in the war-torn nation, according to the poll by The Senlis Council, an international think-tank.
The Taliban's "very clever propaganda" tells young Afghan men that NATO does not care about them, and is only concerned about waging their own war, said Norine MacDonald, founder and lead field researcher for the group.
Afghans are "worse off (now) than under Taliban" rule, she said at the opening of the council's Canadian office in Ottawa.
"The Afghan people, five years after the international community has come to Afghanistan, despite our best intentions, are suffering," she told reporters.
Southern Afghanistan is facing serious food shortages which could play into the hands of the country's hard-line former leaders the Taliban, she said.
Growing civilian injuries caused by NATO-Taliban fighting, and a US-led poppy eradication program have also heightened local villagers' frustration with NATO forces.
In a critical report, the think tank said the situation is "undermining military efforts" in Afghanistan.
The organization, an international policy group with offices in London, Paris, Brussels and Kabul, based its research on testimony from Afghans, and had videos showing injured civilians with poor healthcare and dozens of refugee camps in Kandahar province where Afghans line up for food scraps.
According to the organization's poll, fifty percent of men in Afghanistan said they believe the Taliban will defeat international forces.
MacDonald urged Canada to send a special envoy to Afghanistan to replace the Canadian International Development Agency, which is "almost non-existent" on the ground and has proven to be woefully inadequate in helping ease starvation in the war zone.
As well, aid funding must be increased and UN millennium goals for eradicating poverty and starvation should be adopted as benchmarks, the report said.
Opposition New Democratic Party defense critic Alexa McDonough said Canada has spent 17.1 billion dollars (15.8 billion US) on its military mission and only 600 million dollars (555.7 billion US) on development and aid in Afghanistan since 2002, citing ministers responsible for each dossier.
The government said military spending includes the overall cost of maintaining Canada's forces, who would have to be paid and equipped even if they were not deployed to Afghanistan, said Isabelle Bouchard, spokesperson for Defense Minister Gordon O'Connor.
Field hospitals must be set up in Kandahar province, the Senlis report urged, to treat civilians injured in fighting between NATO forces and insurgents.
The poppy eradication program must be halted until farmers have a chance to grow alternative legal crops, it said. MacDonald urged NATO countries to try a poppy-for-medicine pilot program in one village and expand it.
Afghanistan produces 92 percent of the world's opium, most of which is used in Europe, Russia, China, Iran and Central Asia often as heroin.
Senlis said Western policy was creating extreme poverty in Afghanistan and was pushing the population to seek help from the Taliban to protect their interests.
Instead of ripping up the plants, which has been "ineffective and inflammatory," says MacDonald, she recommended using them for medicinal purposes in pain-relieving drugs like morphine and codeine rather than as a narcotic.
Canada has 2,500 troops based in the volatile Kandahar province.
Fifty-six soldiers and one diplomat have been killed in Afghanistan since the start of the mission in 2002, after US forces ousted the Taliban from power for harboring accused terrorist Osama bin Laden.
MacDonald, a Canadian who has lived in Afghanistan for two years, has been invited by the opposition to testify at a foreign affairs parliamentary committee on Tuesday.
"Canada must not forget that the main objective in Afghanistan is to build a peaceful and prosperous nation," she said. | 
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