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There is a basic contradiction on show here and I don't know how it is going to be resolved.

The international community is fed up with poor performance by the Afghan government. It wants results. It is piling in more soldiers, administrators, and development experts.

Yet the more of these people who go there, the less capable the Afghan state must appear to its people.

There are of course explanations about how this square can be circled. If many of the soldiers and aid workers are actually going there to mentor or train Afghans then it should be possible for Afghanistan to stand on its own two feet more quickly - that's the theory.

It ought to work, but the US and other Nato countries are just so impatient to get results that this plan to stand up more reliable Afghan institutions could easily be undermined.

Talking at the conference to Kai Eide, the outgoing UN Special Envoy to Afghanistan, it is obvious that he is quite concerned about certain moves making the Afghans more dependent on foreign help rather than less.

He caused a stir by suggested in a recent press interview that the US troop surge could have this effect.

Seeing at first hand during a recent operation in Helmand how the Afghan army provided only around 10% of the troops and their men were used to enter homes and handle detainees, while much larger numbers of US troops fought the Taliban, I can see Mr Eide's point.

Pouring that number of Americans, with all their immense firepower into that district sent its own message about who was in charge and who was subservient.

The US military, under orders from the White House, wants quick results. But this business of building governance or "capacity" is inherently a long and drawn out one.

If the Afghans are not ready to clear an area or build a road, it is the foreigners who are stepping in to get it done.

The Chinese have a programme to train Afghan government officials. They instructed 500 so far, and are planning the same again.

Other nations have some similar projects and much of this involves university-level courses outside Afghanistan.

This is the other end of what was discussed at the London conference - slow, unspectacular capacity building.

So if the new capacity is growing only slowly where will this leave those districts being cleared of Taliban during the coming months at such a high cost in lives and money?

One possibility is that the international effort will simply falter as the areas are turned over to Afghan officials and police.

In trying to resolve that dilemma generals and diplomats are now placing increasing emphasis on the plans to turn Taliban by financial and other incentives.

The task of standing up a bigger, better, Afghan state will after all be much easier if the forces that oppose it can be undermined.

It's a good theory anyway.

The loss of a colleague like Rupert Hamer is a bitter blow for all journalists, but particularly for that intrepid band who have in recent months been operating in Helmand Province - the most violent in Afghanistan.

My own rationale for being there when I was embedded with US marines late last year, like Rupert's, is that you cannot cover a war from an armchair a safe distance away.

There are simply too many people mouthing off about Afghanistan who have never been there and have no intention of seeing what the conflict actually looks like on the ground.

My decision had nothing to do with pay or promotion - I will be in the same position on the same money if I stay safely at home with my family - it is simply a matter of bearing witness to conflict rather than simply relying on the press statements of those engaged in it.

'Blood price'

We know it is dangerous work. Back in 1989 I cried like a baby when David Blundy, one of my first journalistic mentors, was killed by a sniper in El Salvador.

But over time the loss of colleagues who I enjoyed beers and happy times with, like Rory Peck or Patrick Bourrat, has hardened me, not to the personal or family tragedy that each of these losses represents, but to the fact that we cannot report wars with integrity without there being a blood price.

Of course, as in the case of Rupert's colleague, Mirror photographer Philip Coburn who was seriously injured in the same incident, that price may also be a life changing injury.

Now in Helmand, it is intensely frustrating not being able to operate there independently, but the chances of being kidnapped or murdered are just too high.

So embedding with the military offers us a way of reporting on what is happening in those war-torn regions as well as covering the actions of Nato forces, a central part of that story.

'Matter of time'

The truth is though that all of us have felt the threat level rising in recent months.

Once you are on a patrol or in a vehicle with soldiers you are just as much of a target as they are, and as journalists gather to swap experiences, the anecdotes of close shaves, coming under fire, or narrowly avoiding an Improvised Explosive Device (or IED) have multiplied.

All of us knew, to coin a well worn phrase that it was just, "a matter of time".

Back in December, I and cameraman Mark McCauley were also embedded with US marines in Helmand as they re-took a Taleban stronghold called Now Zad.

It was not an easy assignment and we had a few scrapes, including coming under fire, with bullets whistling around in our vehicle.

During our assignment, we wore "subdued" colours such as brown and grey and, for the first time, used khaki flak jackets.

The ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ safety team has decided that these assignments are so dangerous that "journalists' blue" body armour, used since the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s, should be replaced by something less visible in southern Afghanistan.

Blurring the lines

Donning the khaki flak jacket and helmet was a truly depressing moment for me.

Long ago I served in the Army - and I am absolutely determined to maintain the distinction between soldier and reporter.

But if that distinction exists for the Taliban it is only, in the view of some of our safety people, that they calculate that killing a reporter will get them bigger headlines than taking a soldier's life.

When I think of Rupert's widow and children, and the way their lives have been changed for ever, my heart is heavy.

We ask a lot of our families, the Afghan gang.

But we are doing something that we believe in passionately and in an age where the public are often cynical or negative about what reporters do, we can only hope that people appreciate the sacrifice.