An open can of Heineken in the hand of an Afghan youth pedalling a bicycle seemed an unusual sight for noon in Kabul, so I asked our driver what this was about. He laughed, and said: “Don’t you know? This is democracy.”

While democracy is notoriously difficult to define, it is generally considered to be something positive. Until the debacle of the August presidential elections, “fledgling democracy” was touted as one of the west’s great achievements in Afghanistan.