Journalists may disagree but figures sometimes tell you more about the news environment than whole paragraphs can. This week's cover story is the ninth in 10 issues devoted to the US-led war against Islamic terrorism. For India Today, it has dwarfed even the Kargil war, which in 1999 led to eight successive cover stories. Enduring Freedom, as the American military operation in Afghanistan is codenamed, has been and will be of enduring relevance to us.

In this issue we cover the liberation of Kabul, a decisive moment in the Northern Alliance's battle against the Taliban. The spontaneity and the fervour with which the people of Afghanistan's embattled capital city greeted their unlikely rescuers is the stuff of human drama. It is also cause for deja vu. A decade ago, we put the mujahideen takeover of Kabul on the cover ("Ominous Future", May 15, 1992) but cautioned that the factionalism of the regime "may destabilise the region and cause serious problems for India". It is tempting to repeat the warning.

War is never an easy business to report but the Afghan conflict has been particularly hard on us. Access to the frontlines has been near impossible. The Pakistani Government has simply refused to entertain visa applications. While our magazine sent the only Indian print journalists to Northern Alliance territory, they had to file stories from a country where communication facilities are primitive to non-existent. Satellite phones, every major international media network's lifeline, are banned in India, available only to military and intelligence authorities. The India Today Group's application for import of satellite phones has been shuttling between ministries for weeks now.

(Aroon Purie)