lord dannatt oversaw britain's operations in afghanistan as chief of the defence staff from 2006 to 2009g to you. do you recognise that the country there is slipping away? well, i certainly recognise, on the basis of the film you have just shown, that the situation remains very difficult, and as is expected, it remains one that we have to fight, or the afghan security forces have to fight with great intensity. i think the proportion of the country that the film showed, of 10—12% under taliban control, is entirely consistent with what we expected. kandahar province, helmand province, these were always the heartlands of the insurgency against the kabul government, so it is not at all surprisingly this is where the focus of the fighting is. and then of course you have got various sallies forth by the taliban into kabul to catch the headline — very successfully, i may say, courtesy of the international media — of what goes on in kabul. a very telling slip you made, and then you said the afghan army needs to fight. let me be clear. we, the british government, may have ended our combat operati