The Governor of Uruzgan — the Afghan province where Australia's training and reconstruction effort was centred — says soldiers there are defecting to the Taliban.

Desperate officials said they would welcome Australian forces back.

Since September, Tarin Kot, the dusty home for Australia's soldiers and reconstruction teams until late 2014 has been menaced, Uruzgan's Provincial Governor Mohammad Nazir Kharoti said.

"The Taliban was coming very close to the city, I can say a kilometre, to two kilometres in some sites," he said.

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Mr Kharoti has also confirmed that dozens of soldiers guarding one isolated post recently surrendered and defected to the Taliban.

He said they had been isolated and surrounded at the Mashal base in Chora district.

"For many days they have very tough and hard time, and they joined the Taliban side," he said.

Asked if he could confirm local media reports of 41 soldiers defecting he replied: "Around something like that, yeah."

Desertions, casualties deplete ranks

The latest American assessment of Afghanistan, released a week ago, highlights severe casualties and desertion as major issues for Afghanistan's understrength security forces.

The Afghan National Army alone is down almost 2,200 fighting personnel in just the last three months.

The same report, from America's Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, also shows the Taliban increasing its territorial reach.

In Uruzgan, monitoring group the Long War Journal said insurgents control one of the districts surrounding Tarin Kot, while four others are deemed "contested".

Calls for diggers' return

Uruzgan parliamentarian Obaidullah Barakzai said the province's security began to deteriorate as soon as Australia's troops withdrew in December 2014.

"At the moment … the situation is not good here in Uruzgan because the Australian soldiers they already left, that's why the security situation is becoming bad," he said.

Mr Barakzai told Afghanistan's Parliament last week that just a handful of the security forces' camps for fighting the Taliban in Uruzgan remained operational.

Speaking through a translator, Mr Barakzai said Uruzgan would welcome Australian troops' return.

"If they are coming back to Uruzgan, the Australian soldiers, that would be very good idea," he said.

Governor Kharoti too recently asked Australia's ambassador to Afghanistan to send troops and attack helicopters.

The 12-year mission to Afghanistan was Australia's longest foreign deployment. Forty Australian soldiers were killed and 261 were seriously wounded.

As he reflected on poorly-supplied Afghan troops surrendering to join Taliban ranks, a long sigh reveals a sense of despair, and abandonment by the west.

"It is very hard," he said.

"It is very hard. Even to hear one person is joining the Taliban side, it is very hard.

"But, this is the war, we couldn't change it," he said, sighing again.