The US claims Operation Anaconda is almost complete
After just over two weeks of fighting in inhospitable terrain, Operation Anaconda - the US effort to wipe out a major al-Qaeda and Taleban concentration in eastern Afghanistan - is drawing to a close.
The operation was billed by US commanders as a decisive battle.
It has been claimed that hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters have been killed after concerted ground and air operations.
But now a more complex picture is emerging, and even the Americans are accepting that further battles are still ahead.
Body count
Ever since the Vietnam War, where US success in combat was literally measured in the number of enemy troops killed, the Pentagon has been wary about issuing body counts.
Some US sources claim to have inflicted several hundred casualties in what was some of the most intensive ground combat that US troops have been engaged in for many years.
But it is impossible to verify what the Americans are saying.
Journalists have had only limited access to an area which is considered still highly dangerous.
And America's local Afghan allies seem sceptical about some of the more extravagant US claims.
Tough stakes
Even anecdotal reports from conversations with middle-ranking US officers suggest that many Taleban and al-Qaeda fighters may have simply melted away into the rugged terrain.
Already US sources are indicating that there will be other battles against further concentrations of fighters in the future.
So was this operation a success or a failure for the Pentagon?
The truth seems elusive at best.
For the Americans this was probably a mitigated victory. Lessons will have been learnt by both sides.
But paradoxically it was probably the American casualties that send the more significant signal.
A message that the stakes in this war are fundamentally different for the Americans and that American lives will be lost in prosecuting it.