Masoom Stanekzai gave peace more chance than most in Afghanistan. As the secretary of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, he was the government's chief bureaucrat charged with brokering a peace with the Taliban. His responsibility was to somehow negotiate an end to a conflict a decade of war has barely shifted.
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He believed in the possibility of negotiations, meeting regularly with the emissaries who would descend from the hills around Kandahar, or arrive from the mountains near the Pakistan border carrying a message from the Taliban leadership.
Stanekzai was standing next to the council's chief, and former Afghan president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, last Thursday when they received the latest envoy.
In traditional Afghan style, the man hugged Rabbani in greeting. As he did so, he detonated the bomb he had hidden in his turban. Rabbani was killed, his attacker too.
Stanekzai survived, but was badly injured. The burns to his head and arms are healing, but his faith in the peace process, like that of so many in Afghanistan, appears mortally wounded.
Four months ago, he told tribal elders in the southern province of Zabul the reconciliation effort was succeeding, that progress was being made in finding common ground with the insurgents.
''You should know that the peace process is generally supported by everybody, the international community is behind it and Afghanistan will not be abandoned once again.'' But from his hospital bed he told journalists the Taliban were ''enemies of peace in Afghanistan''.
''Those who could not pull themselves out of terrorism to join a political process, what would be their message to the future of Afghanistan?'' he asked. Stanekzai's disenchantment is increasingly typical.
This week marks 10 years since the latest war in Afghanistan's brutal history began. And it is precisely that, another grinding conflict in a country that has known little but violence. Anniversaries, it seems, beget more violence.
On September 26, 2001, CIA agents landed secretly in the Panjshir Valley, meeting up with Northern Alliance fighters in preparation for America's offensive against the Taliban, which began with a massive bombing raid over the country a fortnight later.
Precisely five years before that, on September 26, 1996, the Taliban took the capital Kabul by force, beating, castrating and hanging from a traffic barricade the former president Mohammad Najibullah.
On September 26 this year, it was reported that an Afghan employee of the CIA's clandestine base in Kabul had taken a gun into the building and shot an American citizen.
The players change, but the brutality remains.
Operation Enduring Freedom - to give the current hostility its US name - is set to end some time in 2014. But there is little that is free about Afghanistan, and little that appears set to endure beyond the international troops' withdrawal in three years.
Regardless of the spin from both sides, by the most fundamental measure, civilian and military deaths, the conflict is worsening. Kabul, the prism through which Afghanistan is viewed, has endured one of its most violent fighting seasons since the war began.
The city's airport, a military hospital, central police station, the Intercontinental Hotel, even the ministry of defence have been successfully attacked. Those supposedly best protected in the capital no longer feel safe.
Many of Afghanistan's leaders have not been seen outside their homes for months, after the Taliban adopted a new tactic of killing, specifically, the allies of President Hamid Karzai.
The beleaguered President finds himself increasingly isolated as he loses friends, family and political backers, the warlords and tribal strongmen who can secure him popular support.
Even the US embassy and NATO's military headquarters, perhaps the most secure buildings in all of Afghanistan, were attacked this month by six gunmen who stormed an unoccupied nearby building and laid siege to the centre of the city for 19 hours.
While security in Afghanistan deteriorates, those concerned about Afghanistan's future, and charged with preventing its collapse back into the internecine warfare of previous decades, are looking elsewhere too. The US, in particular, has turned its attention to Pakistan, and that country's dichotomous relationship with terrorist organisations.
Afghanistan's problem with the Taliban is as much Pakistan's, America's military chiefs argue.
The Taliban leadership, including the terrorist network's supreme commander, Mullah Omar, all live over the border, where, the US alleges, they enjoy a security afforded to them by a Pakistani government that walks both sides of the street on terrorism.
An ''ally'' of America's in fighting terrorism, Pakistan takes billions in US aid money and says it suffers more from terrorism than almost any other country, and is doing all it can to find insurgents inside its borders. But the country is also anxious to maintain some influence in Afghanistan after 2014, and is unwilling to abandon its secret, but strong, links with the groups likely to wield significant influence, even power.
A terrorist outfit like the Taliban-linked Haqqani is essentially ''a strategic arm'' of the Pakistani government's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, told the Senate Armed Services Committee this week.
''History teaches us that it is difficult to defeat an insurgency when fighters enjoy sanctuary outside national boundaries, and we are seeing that again today,'' he said in a pointed barb at Pakistan.
Admiral Mullen is 64 and retires today. It was perhaps this fact that inspired the blunt character of his final testimony, absent, as it was, of the diplomacy that had previously been his hallmark.
In previous years, Mullen has recognised the serious challenges being faced in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but his testimony has been littered with positive phrases, such as ''we will make significant headway'' and ''I believe we can succeed''.
But like Stanekzai, his latest words are his least hopeful.
In his final testimony before the committee, he railed against Pakistan's malign influence, and warned that, without ''a serious new approach'', the violence and corruption plaguing Afghanistan would continue long after the country was left to fend for itself.
''At best, this would lead to continued localised conflicts as neighbourhood strongmen angle for their cut and the people for their survival; at worst it could lead to government collapse and civil war,'' Admiral Mullen said.
