The United States and its Afghan allies have convincingly won the just-concluded Battle of Shahi Kot, the biggest ground clash of the five-month-old Afghan war.

But no one in the hi-tech Pentagon or the low-tech Afghanistan Defence Ministry is claiming to have won the war.

If anything, the battle in which less than 1,000 Taliban-al-Qaeda fighters held the might of the US war machine at bay from their snow-covered caves in east Afghanistan for 12 days raised more questions than it answered.

Is the US heading into a Soviet-style quagmire where it can control cities but not the countryside? Can Afghan forces, without help from the US and other allies, stop the fundamentalist Taliban regrouping in a bid to win back power?

In the latest battle, Afghan warlords put aside their own ambitions to fight together in the final push into the Shahi Kot Valley — but how long will this unity last?

A top aide of Afghan Defence Minister Mohammad Fahim, is in no doubt the involvement of the US army and its Western allies will continue to be vital in the war on the Taliban.

Pessimists have suggested the length and ferocity of the battle signalled America could face the same kind of guerilla war which Moscow's troops found so hard to counter during their 1980s occupation of Afghanistan.

Gulbuddin says the comparison is unjustified.

"I cannot compare the US presence with the Soviet, because the Soviets took on the whole country. But US-led forces came with our agreement."

There are crucial differences between the US involvement in Afghanistan and the Soviet occupation.

Except for about six of Afghanistan's 32 provinces — all near the border with Pakistan — there is at least acceptance, if not a wholehearted welcome, of US presence.

In contrast, the mujahideen who fought the Soviets in the 1980s and early 1990s were spread throughout the country and had support in just about every village.

While much has been made of the Taliban's ability to get its hands on weapons, their supplies are miniscule compared with what was available to the 1980's mujahideen.

Washington and other Western nations funnelled billions of dollars in weapons through Pakistan to the mujahideen including Stinger surface to air missiles, crucial in finally forcing Moscow to pull back.

There was no sign of a Stinger in the battle for Shahi Kot.

Yet there is still one controversial question which the battle for Shahi Kot has raised, a question more reminiscent of the American experience in Vietnam than the Soviet Union's in Afghanistan.

Simply put, the body count — the number of enemy killed — is back.

Controversial in Vietnam as a measure of progress in winning the war against the Viet Cong, the body count, or rather its accuracy, is already a hot topic in Afghanistan.

The Pentagon estimates about 800 rebels died at Shahi Kot and about 20 prisoners were taken. It says most of the bodies are still buried in caves collapsed by US B-52 bombing.

Afghan soldiers say they have found only about 100 bodies and they believe many rebels escaped the battle through little-known mountain trails either to Pakistan or other areas of Afghanistan.

It was the same in Vietnam.

Carpet bombing of enemy locations reported to have killed hundreds was followed by the insertion of helicopter-borne troops who found few bodies or suddenly ran into supposedly killed Viet Cong elsewhere.

In Vietnam, the longer the guerrilla war went on, the more the local population swung behind the guerrillas through their appeal to throw out a foreign intruder and anger at mistaken bombing of civilians. It could be the same in Afghanistan.