In the long war perspective, where the Taliban momentum increases despite the increased military operations, it can safely be concluded that victory cannot be defined on the basis of how many terrorists have been killed, but how many have undergone an ideological transformation.
The terrorist ideology is what needs to come under severe critical analysis with a surge - not in troops - but in alternate philosophies based fundamentally on tolerance, perseverance and the love of humanity as their underlying postulates.
A half-hearted effort, however, in this direction has been made by religious scholars but they have remained unable to proceed any further from the most basic stage of denouncing suicide bombing, classing them 'Haraam' that is, prohibited in Islam, without arriving to the next, which inevitably comprises an equally potent counter religious narrative to replace the previous one in order to convert the radicalised militant mind style.
With a lethal cocktail of armies from all over the globe applying all sorts of fancy strategies, spending millions of dollars to limit the physical space, the psychological space is, as a consequence, continuously expanding, where mutual grievances and protracted frustrations coupled with a need to reverse the prevalent power structure gives rise to a shared psyche that brings all different factions under a similar umbrella, the extremists!
One has to realise, however, that ideologies face no spatial or temporal constraints as they are not bound to be specific to any region, race, culture or a time period. They stem from any and every region where discontent and deprivation are nurtured and propagated through social structures, thus making it an immensely complex phenomenon to control and reverse, as entire mega structures need to be dismantled for it to be reversed.
Never was there a time when the world was free from such insurgencies that reared their ugly heads either in one place or the other, or for one reason or the other. But the fact remains is that the insurgents have to be dealt with by adopting an appropriately organised approach after deciphering their underlying aim and the rationale that drives their movements.
The contemporary logic of clear, hold and build in Afghanistan, has become too vague a term that entails all sorts of human rights violations and massive collateral damage in its multiple folds, thus leading to a reversal of the war objectives that further fuels the conflict.