The recent trial of an Afghan national for his conversion to Christianity underscores the fragility of human rights values in a country saved from the clutches of the Taliban by a coalition of western armies led by the US.

Today in Afghanistan, girls go to school and to the university; the burqah is not compulsory for women who can walk the streets unaccompanied; they are not executed in public for adultery; men are not whipped for not sporting a fist-long beard. The influx of UN and NGO's money have brought a certain prosperity to the cities which are patrolled by national as well as NATO forces....