Hamid Karzai’s brother was killed yesterday, a shooting that the Taliban had claimed responsibility for. Taking out the brother of the President of Afghanistan, who was the governor of Kandahar, was they said their greatest achievement of this entire war.

Of course, this does not mean that the war is over in any way.

However, if one adds this on to the attacks in Kabul which began with a spectacular attempt to storm the capital a year or so ago, as well as the rising coalition casuality numbers – there is not a day when there is not a report of an incident resulting in a loss of life – and one can sense that America’s position around the bargaining table is getting that much weaker.  Those who have been following this war from the beginning could see that the American-led invasion after the attacks on 9/11 was doomed to fail from the start. You can talk about the history, more recently that of the failed Soviet occupation, and of course that of Great Britain, and Alexander the Great. The reality though is that by allying themselves with such characters as Ahmed Wali Karzai the Americans were never going to get a fully functioning state and as a result they were never going to secure the goodwill of the people of Afghanistan, which is, frankly, who they are currently fighting in this their longest war.