Threats, not triumph

That caution was perhaps a lesson learned from 10 years of fighting terrorists, especially in Afghanistan, the 'Graveyard of Empires'.

Three days before the raid, an award winning correspondent gave a lecture at Bovington Tank Museum that revealed just how much damage overconfidence has done in the past.

David Loyn from the BBC spoke to a gripped audience of around 50 people using material from his book on the country, Butcher and Bolt.

He was there when the Taliban captured Kabul and went on to interview members behind enemy lines in Helmand in 2007.

And he told the audience - including some servicemen - how empires, usually ours, had spent 200 years learning the harsh lessons of attempting to control the country.

Afghanistan was on the northwest border of British India and was seen as potential base for hostile powers - the French, then the Russians.

Mr Loyn said the first British army sent to invade had such "enormous hubris" that one regiment took a pack of foxhounds.

It's annihilation in the Khyber Pass in 1842, with the death of 16,000 men women and children, and just one survivor, was the first of many sobering anecdotes.

The uncomfortable modern parallels often struck home.

He explained how the word 'Talib' was first used in 1880.

And he showed a drawing of 'Ghazis', ultra-religious Afghan fighters, advancing towards British guns while firing their own rifles in the air to ensure their martyrdom.

"We knew about these characters 100 years ago and we forgot about them," he said.

In February this year he had visited Maiwand, the scene of another British defeat during the second Anglo-Afghan war in 1880.

He said: "The Afghans remember to this day what happened in Maiwand. The Taliban were formed in a village near Maiwand.

"There were Afghans there and they said 'oh, so you are English are you? We know what happened to you here'.

"There was a real sense that the English could be beaten."

He also showed a quote from Sir Claude Wade, a British diplomat who pursued a policy of staying out of the country.

"There is nothing more to be dreaded or guarded against... than the overweening confidence with which Europeans are too often accustomed to regard the excellence of their own institutions and the anxiety that they display to introduce them in new and untried soils."

The latest attempt by westerners to introduce their own institutions in Afghanistan came after the 2001 invasion to dislodge al-Queda and Osama Bin Laden.

"I certainly feel the British army was put in an impossible role," said Mr Loyn, of the job they had to in Helmand afterwards.

"There wasn't the politics there to back it up. There's only a certain amount you can ask soldiers. You can't win militarily."

But it seems lessons have been learned and he was "more optimistic in than in some years" about the country's future.

He said that since 2009, efforts to build Afghan civil society appear to be working - he was "blown away" by some of the work in areas like justice, roads and education.

And he had noticed little signs the Afghans wanted an ordered society.

He cited a radio show hosted in Kabul by a 22-year-old woman - with quite a few male callers - that was simply titled "What are you cooking for lunch?"

On the military front, he said there are now 35,000 troops instead of 5,000 in Helmand.

And special forces intelligence is now so good that if you are appointed commander of the Kandahar Taliban you would be "dead within a week."

Nine Dorsetmen have died in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion and 1 Rifles, the former Devon and Dorsets, are in the early stages of another tour.

Mr Loyn said corruption and the porous border are still major concerns.

But he said: "I do believe now that soldiers are dying for something that looks like it will work, rather than something that won't."