Entering the city while letting most of the fighters escape would pave the way for a long partisan war, waged by guerrillas based in the mountains, where they are almost impossible to winkleout.
Its existence came to public notice just when, after a quarter-century of intermittent activity on the Labour back benches, Mr Robinson had become a Treasury minister in Tony Blair's new government, and not long after he, of all ministers, had been put in charge of a government effort to winkleout offshore tax havens.