Enormous numbers of additional non-combatants have become refugees, an unknown number are going to die over the coming weeks and months as in some parts of Afghanistan the problems of distributing aid becomes even greater as warlords carve up the country. One nasty regime has been replaced by what is only to likely to be an almost equally nasty regime.

There have been some appalling massacres. I'm looking at a picture in today's paper of dead bodies with their hands tied behind their backs. Hands tied behind their backs, think of it. That's the kind of thing the Nazis did. ("Nasty things happen in war" said the English Home Secretary, rejecting calls by Mary Robinson for an inquiry into what actually happened - much the same line as I imagine Milosevic is going to take over the Srebenica atrocities.)

There is no real reason to think that anything that has happened has reduced the likelihood of further terrorist outrages. Osama Bin Laden is still on the loose, for what that matters. In any case it doesn't seem too plausible that anyone in Afghanistan could have had anything directly to do with operational planning and carrying out of what happened on September 11. That was done in America and in Europe and in places like Saudi Arabia.

And of course it's not over yet by a long way.

Triumphalism just isn't appropriate. Relief that some things have worked out better than might have been feared, hope that somehow things may work out better than looks likely in the future, some comfort in the fact that at least a few innocent pleasures are now available to people in Afghanistan - kite-flying and music, and that the situation of women may be less restricted. Those are the appropriate feelings.

And if it's true that only one American combatant has been killed, that's good. But the nationality of the victims in this episode are no more relevant to me than the myriad nationalities of the victims on September 11th.