What progress in the backroom war against terror?

The Taliban has yielded up Kandahar and, as we write, special forces are no doubt closing in on Osama bin Laden’s last refuge. The military endgame in Afghanistan may be in sight but the greater conflict is clearly far from over; President Bush warned at the outset that it would be a long war. Intelligence suggests that Al Qaeda has connections in at least 63 countries and investigators are unpicking a Byzantine weave of conventional and underground funding. Hundi and hawala unofficial banking mechanisms have been exposed to scrutiny and trade pricing has been called into question: research into price manipulation, conducted by Professors Zdanowicz and Pak for Money Laundering Alert , suggests that inflated payments for honey exports from the US could have been used by the terrorists to launder funds into the United States.