Promises To Keep, Miles to Go Before We Sleep.

But still: Almost three million girls are back in school, women are back at work, 40 per cent of the media are women and 25 per cent of regional councillors are female. What’s more, the fundamentalist mentality is changing. Only a few women in urban centres still wear a burka. Religious doctrines are slightly less oppressive. The constitution demands that 25 per cent of seats in the parliament are reserved for women. Says Shinkai Karokhail, 49, a long-time women’s activist and member of parliament for Kabul: “It’s the presence of countries like Canada that have made that happen. It has given me the right to speak out and to claim my space. The international community is like a thousand eyes on the government."

Read Sally's essay and you will understand why the resort to shrill troops-out and peace-talks polemics that has dominated the default party line across the liberal-left in the rich countries of the world constitutes the most disgraceful and unforgivable abdication of the duty of solidarity since the "America-first" movement, which self-immolated 70 years ago.

Negotiate with a form of barbarism so savage that it dispatches its bombers in the form of ice-cream vendors to lure children to their deaths? Canada's allegedly "progressive" New Democrats actually want credit for the idea of negotiating a sell-out to the Taliban. They're not ashamed of it. They're actually proud of it.