Troops must spare Blair's blushes

In the small hours of 9 January, Tony Blair declared to a mixed audience of Afghans, UN staff and allied troops at Bagram airport that the war was over, "the Taliban is defeated, al Qaeda scattered".

Yesterday he left the Commons as his Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon rose to say in effect that war is far from over, and Britain is sending 1,700 Royal Marines to help fight "a determined enemy". So, was Mr Blair bluffing? At the time quite a few in the audience at Bagram were not persuaded by his remarks, although there is no doubt Mr Blair believed the "scattered" parts of al Qaeda would be mopped up quickly.

In this war reliable intelligence has proved hard to come by. "It was about as convincing as a wet flannel," said one of the assembled company. Even then it was clear that parts of the Taliban and al Qaeda were undefeated. The Taliban's founder Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden are alive and thoroughly active - by all serious intelligence assessments. The likelihood now is that Bin Laden is either in southern Afghanistan or the Pakistan border region. Omar escaped US bombing on a moped and is now rallying a guerrilla army. Together with their regional allies, Taliban and al Qaeda can field at least 10,000 fighters, possibly as many as 20,000. Suspicions are growing that al Qaeda could be supplied with biological and chemical weapons from Iraq.

The US tactics on the ground have been those of the cavalry commander stuck in the Wild West fort. He occasionally sends out raiding parties, but then brings them back to the safety of the stockade. The Marines know how to hide up in mountains for days, and even weeks. This is the key to the battle for intelligence. In the past weeks it appears that the Taliban and al Qaeda enemy have found it too easy to read the intentions of US forces, and have had the natural screen of the mists of the mountains. As spring comes the mountain mists have lifted. America and its allies face a tough and long guerrilla war in Afghanistan, which could spread across the region.

The Marines are being sent in to try to stop yet another Afghan war becoming a long one - and, no doubt, to spare Tony Blair's blushes.