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Debate about the risks faced by the international community in supporting President Hamid Karzai’s “corrupt” Afghan government regularly omits the people that matter most: Afghans.

Military losses being suffered by Britain, the United States and other coalition forces are tragic - each death and injury a terrible blow within a real community, of families, friends and comrades. The cumulative impact on a nation is clearly significant, and the collective mood in Britain, for example, is more sombre by the week.

Yet what of the Afghan people? Those we rarely see, excepting the occasional refugee, diplomatic or academic in a television studio discussion in the West? At Amnesty we hear time and time again from Afghans - professionals, traders, housewives, the...