In response to the deteriorating security situation and a doubling of the civilian death toll – to almost 700 in the first six months of this year compared with 2007, according to United Nations' figures – President Bush announced that a US Marines battalion, scheduled to deploy in Iraq, would instead be going to Afghanistan, and America is pressing its European allies to follow suit and send more soldiers. The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has used the deployment of additional troops in Afghanistan as a symbol of Franco-American rapprochement after the rifts in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. The resurgence of the Taliban has also featured prominently in this year's American presidential campaign. Meeting Ramazan, and hearing his story, seemed like an important way to understand what had gone wrong in Afghanistan, and, more importantly, what needed to be done to save the American project, if indeed that were possible.