Reality check

By the end of last month, less than ten days into our journey, the number of British casualties in Afghanistan had increased to 110, reported as the highest number of British deaths in the land campaign in any one month, since the start of operations in 2002.

Despite that, Gerard Baker of The Times wrote a bullish column telling us to: Cheer up. We're winning this War on Terror”. Covering both the Iraqi and Afghani campaigns, he breathlessly announced that Al-Qaeda and the Taleban were "in retreat", the surge had worked in Iraq and Islamism had been discredited.

This is our ninth posts in our series "Winning the war" in Afghanistan. Read more on Defence of the Realm