History will repeat itself in perfect symmetry, the hand-wringers and naysayers say, glibly ignoring every exception to the rule. Staring back at them through the mirror, Nato commanders advertise tactical success as the template for future hope, smiling on through the shambles, forgetting the maxim that they were so fond of a couple of years ago: "tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat".

Meanwhile the current mission aim is an emaciated shadow of its former self. Once the intervention hoped to crush the Taliban insurgency, establish democracy, human rights and the rule of law, and elevate the status of women. Now it intends to damage the insurgency as much as possible over the next two years; establish durable social, economic and power structures where possible; then hand the situation over to strengthened Afghan security forces in the hope they can contain the situation while holding the country together as an entity.

The new aim sounds so redacted that it may even be achievable. Yet it is exactly the same mission as the Soviets had between 1985, the year of their surge, and their 1989 handover of the war to Najibullah. No wonder Gromov's footsteps still echo across the years.

Peeping shyly through the despondency, there are glimmers of hope in Afghanistan. Listening to Nato's official description of the insurgency in central Helmand for 2011, though it sounds uncannily like a US combat summary from Vietnam's Central Highlands in 1967, even the dourest pessimist must acknowledge that some things have changed for the better.

Across the central area of operations, contact with the enemy has decreased, dwindled, or else faded out entirely. Throughout the whole British zone in the province the number of insurgent ambushes, bomb strikes and attacks has been in steep decline. "Attrited", "marginalised", "waning", "spent force", the Taliban are being smothered by a counter-insurgency that is at the edge of "irreversible momentum" or "tipping point". The summer's fighting season never materialised. Month in, month out, the statistics show a tail-off in insurgent activity when compared to 2010, a reduction averaging at least 60 per cent in 12 months, 85 per cent in some areas. In Nad-e Ali district alone the targeted culling of Taliban operational commanders has reduced the estimated insurgent numbers there to a quarter of the Taliban's 2010 strength.