The British government's decision to send 1,700 troops and support personnel to Afghanistan is a sharp reminder that the war against al-Qaeda and Taliban forces is far from over. The British commandos will relieve the US 10th Mountain Division in the rugged terrain of Paktia province. They are there as combat troops and are expected to take casualties - the first such deployment since the Gulf War in 1991.
Yesterday's rare emergency debate in the House of Commons reflected the widespread public disquiet about such an open-ended military commitment.
The recent three-week battle in Shah-i-kot saw an intense engagement between US troops and their enemies, with the precise outcome still disputed. US military commanders claim to have destroyed hundreds of al-Qaeda's most experienced fighters and to have destroyed their base, while Afghan sources said most of them had escaped.
The operation very much continues. Its objective is to prevent al-Qaeda and Taliban forces regrouping in such a way as to threaten the interim Afghan government set up last December. It is hard to see how a victory can be declared until the al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders are captured or killed.
While this fighting continues, the interim government has been struggling to deal with security elsewhere in Afghanistan. This deployment will bring the number of British troops in the country to nearly 6,000. Some 4,000 are in the capital Kabul, providing security for the new administration.
Regrettably, both the US and British governments have refused to extend the forces beyond Kabul and that has given the regional and tribal warlords the opportunity to consolidate control in various combinations with neighbouring powers such as Russia and Iran.
Aid has been extremely slow in coming, so that the government of Mr Hamid Karzai has had scant capacity to assert its authority. A meeting of donors in Kabul next month will address this problem, ahead of the loya jirga or traditional assembly in June which is to agree on a new interim government. The return of the former King Zahir Shah in coming days will exacerbate factional competition.
All this puts Mr Dick Cheney's visit to the Middle East in a different perspective. He was told quite clearly by its leaders that they would not support US action against Iraq unless major progress is made on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is equally hard to see how it could be justified while Afghanistan's future remains so uncertain.