Now the conflict in Afghanistan will become Obama’s war

In the next few days the new US and Nato commander General Stanley McChrystal is due to announce his strategy for Afghanistan.

Since the general was appointed by President Obama for the job, the international effort in Afghanistan now becomes more personally Obama's war.

General McChrystal will spell out Britain's role in his plans - and in response to this Gordon Brown is expected to increase the number of British troops to 9,800 and agree to keep this number on the ground into next year.

Previously the Prime Minister had agreed to an extra 750 being sent to Afghanistan (bringing the current total to just over 9,000) on a temporary basis to help out in the August elections and then come home.

British ministers and commanders are haunted by two spectres - that the seeming tactical failure two years ago of British troops in Basra might be repeated in Helmand, and the failure in military credibility by the Nato alliance as a whole in Afghanistan.

Comparisons are being made with the failure of the UN protection effort in Bosnia in the Nineties. UN member nations passed resolutions to protect refugee Muslim enclaves such as Srebrenica but, apart from the UK and France, refused to provide the necessary troops - with the result that Srebrenica was seized by Serb forces and thousands of unarmed Muslims were massacred in July 1995.

Key Nato allies in southern Afghanistan have announced that they are to pull their forces out - the Dutch will withdraw from Uruzgun next year, and the Canadians are pulling out their fighting troops in 2011.

In Whitehall the Prime Minister has set up a special war cabinet, which is to meet regularly to monitor progress and in special emergency sessions - one of the first was held last Friday.