Patchwork of armed units hope to prop up battered army as threat of extremists rises across country

Mohammed Omar, the commander known on the battlefield as Pakhsaparan, or "the wall breaker", barked out commands at his bandolier-draped fighters, part of a patchwork of anti-Taliban militias in northern Afghanistan seeking to augment hard-pressed Afghan forces in a strategy fraught with risk.

The Taliban recently came close to overrunning the city of Kunduz in the most alarming threat to any provincial capital since the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan, as the insurgency spreads across the north beyond its traditional southern stronghold.