But it needs more help than it is receiving from the Afghan government. It is just over two months that brave Afghans went to the polls to elect the country's President despite threats from the Taliban that they ran the risk of execution if they did so. Nor was this just talk; just days before the polls the Taliban bombed Nato's headquarters at Kabul.

Tragically for the Afghan people and equally so for the coalition of 42 and the Afghan forces, massive fraud marred the election process. One finding showed that Hamid Karzai's share of the vote included just under one million fraudulent votes.

The country's Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) put Karzai's vote at less than 50 per cent. Karzai and his supporters initially questioned the ECC's authority They demanded a final decision from the Independent Election Committee (IEC), known to be stacked in Karzai's favour. The UN backed the ECC. The IEC, too, favoured a re-run.

One doubts that the experience did Mr Karzai much good, but there is more icing to this frigid story: the UN sacked 200 officials implicated in the massive fraud. They will need to be replaced in time for the second round face-off between Mr Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah next week.

Afghanistan cannot be rebuilt unless political and institutional structures enjoy the confidence of the people. Last August's performance will make it even more difficult for this to happen. A vast swathe of the international community has reckoned, correctly, that Afghanistan is too important to go under as a failed State. American and British soldiers in particular, but German and Italian ones, too, are there - and dying - because 42 governments do not wish to see Afghanistan go under - for its sake and, it need not be emphasised, for the sake of what they regard in the light of 9/11 as their own security.

British foreign secretary David Milliband could not have put it more forcefully: "We are in Afghanistan through necessity. As the home of international terrorism, the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan remains the primary threat to Britain's national security. Having driven Al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan, we must not let it come back again under the safe umbrella of Taliban rule".

President Barack Obama, who declared Afghanistan and not Iraq to be the proper battleground for the defeat of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, shares this view but is coming under pressure from two opposite forces. On the one side, his commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal who replaced the previous commander on the grounds that he would bring innovation to the strategy required to win the war asked, publicly, for 40,000 more men; otherwise the war in Afghanistan would fail - a declaration that had the White House fuming; on the other, a growing reluctance among Democrats in particular to see the war escalating.

The shenanigans in Afghanistan have placed tremendous pressure on Mr Obama, who has adopted a somewhat dangerous wait-and-see stance before he commits more troops. His critics argue that dilly-dallying only encourages the Taliban and discourages Afghans from showing their hands too openly on the next polling day. Clearly, the President must show his determination to stick the course, not least because he believes that America's security also is endangered if Afghanistan were to turn belly up. His Nobel Peace Prize must not enter into his calculations.