It's often said that the war in Afghanistan is more a war of perceptions than anything. This is sometimes in reference to the Taliban's capacity to use propaganda strategically in comparison to NATO, and sometimes to the dire need for the Afghan Government to win greater legitimacy by doing a better job of rooting out the corruption and weakness that too often consumes it. But most frequently, it refers to the waning public support in the western world for our governments' ongoing investments in a war routinely written off as a lost cause.

The popular perception is that the war is being lost, or at least not being won, because the Taliban continue to wage their campaign of suicide bombings, assassinations and intimidation within the territory of Afghanistan.
As a result, the country is militarized to excess. Lives are indeed lost daily at the hands of the insurgents. There is a persistent assault on the Afghan Government, and the Taliban dispatch gloating (and much exaggerated) statements of their glorious martyrdom, in the wake of the bloody scenes they leave behind on their expected ascent to Paradise.

At the risk of being accused of idealism, I propose an alternative view to the popular conception that the Taliban's brute force is in any way triumphant. There is never any shortage of pessimism when it comes to Afghanistan, so allow me this exception.

The Taliban are being defeated in Afghanistan.
What the Taliban are fighting is not the threat of, but the actual existence of what they loathe: progress, modernization, individual rights, and civil society. There would be little motivation to their fight if it didn't badly irk them to see compelling change sweeping over the land they once ran, unimpeded, like a medieval torture chamber.

It's these changes above all else that should form the basis of our assessment of whether the war against the Taliban is being won or lost. This is not a war for land, for resources, or for power. It's a war against fascism and for democracy, and for the right to live in freedom from fear.

This is a country utterly transformed from what it was a decade ago. It's a country where young people, who form the majority of the population, battle out ideas in classrooms, on blogs, and on TV talk shows, instead of with kalashnikovs. There are thousands of civil society organizations from village cooperatives of women farmers to independent electoral monitoring organizations, to think tanks and research institutes. A battalion of courageous women have staked out their turf in parliament, with no plans to retreat.

As a result, there are laws criminalizing violence against women. And while there is some way to go for these laws to really protect women, the widespread outrage among Afghans expressed at last week's execution of a woman in Parwan demonstrates that there is little public tolerance for impunity when women are maimed and murdered.

Women are at work, at university, at business and at trade. There is 55% primary school attendance. Most Afghans report improved access to water and sanitation. In 2009, GDP real growth rate was an astounding 21%. There is a thriving independent media. New universities have opened, and others re-opened. Healthcare coverage is spreading. Large sample size surveys, like the Survey of the Afghan People conducted annually by The Asia Foundation, show unequivocally that the majority of Afghans believe in democracy, support women's rights, and think their country is moving forward.

Acknowledging this remarkable progress does not demand any discounting of the significant challenges facing Afghanistan—the insecurity, the corruption, the slow emergence of the rule of law—which are sufficiently well documented by the media and the analysts, and which I don't need to repeat here.

What is worth repeating is what Afghanistan is emerging from, and what it is up against, to better recognize how far it has come. It's true that 45% of primary school age kids aren't in school in Afghanistan. But in 2001, the public school system essentially did not exist. Girls were shut out of education and a pitiful minority of boys studied in schools with a largely unregulated religious curriculum. In Canada, women have been fighting for well over a century for equal political representation. Yet in 2012, still only one in five of our parliamentarians are women.

With the menace of misogyny still lurking near, Afghan women won 28% of their parliamentary seats, within one decade of a period when they were stripped of all of their rights. Afghan women are making up for lost time, dramatically accelerating forward, surpassing a developed country like Canada in female parliamentary representation.

Every single day, teachers show up in their classrooms to teach, when they could be killed for doing so. Afghans go to vote, when grenades are lobbed into polling stations. Journalists expose government corruption, criticize the insurgents, and broach previously taboo subjects like rape. People use government services, like seed and fertilizer distribution, when the Taliban threaten them for doing so. People debate ideas, work for change, and maintain a resilience and optimism to be reckoned with.

Afghans do all this despite the violence they live amidst. And like a kicked hornets' nest, the Taliban are raving mad about it.
This enduring hope is antithetical to everything they stand for. The Taliban seek the destruction of the fabric of society. Like the Khmer Rouge who orchestrated Cambodia's genocide, they disdain educated people. They destroy art. They obliterate symbols of pluralism, like Bamiyan's great giant Buddhas. They deny the presence of Afghanistan's religious minorities, such as its Hindus and Sikhs, and they've violently persecuted Shias. Where they truly went for the gut of the nation, they sought to smother its women, and thus its ability to protect and nurture, to evolve and reproduce a society that recognizes humanity in both sexes.

The people of Afghanistan are busy building and creating, while the Taliban are busy destroying. But they can only excel so long at something that holds a minus value. The destroyer eventually destroys everything in his wake, including himself. The Taliban will eventually implode on itself.

It's not wishful thinking to suggest that it is you—the progressive, idealistic, democratic citizens of Afghanistan—who are actually winning the war. If you weren't, the Taliban wouldn't be paying attention. So, spite the pessimists and the pundits and the defeatists. Don't give up. There is much to be defended, and everything to gain.