This futile campaign
Western intervention has done little for the Afghans and less to beat terrorism

There was almost relief in Brigadier Roger Lane's voice on Friday morning as he told the Today programme that they'd finally found and killed some AQT - al-Qaida/Taliban - in the remote mountain valleys of eastern Afghanistan. They had engaged their enemy, hitherto as elusive as the snow leopard, and around 1,000 British soldiers were being flown in for the battle. Twenty- four hours later, Operation Condor, as it was named, looked about as farcical as every other operation in Afghanistan has done in the past six months.
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