Despite the grim news out of Pakistan, I assert that the United States and its allies are winning the war against the Taliban and al-Qaida.

The American people support the war, which means we're winning on the home front. Washington, under Obama, Gates and Petraeus, is finally employing a winning strategy on the war front, and the Taliban's brutality is costing them the hearts and minds of the Pakistani people.

Americans support the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan because we know we cannot afford to lose. If we depart from Afghanistan or abandon Pakistan, the Taliban will reconstitute itself. That would give al-Qaida a safe haven from which to attack us, which is exactly where we started on Sept. 11, 2001.

The political establishment in Washington is also on board: Obama's commitment to Afghanistan bolsters his hawk credentials in the face of the right's opposition to his Iraq withdrawal; the Republicans support the war because it started under their watch. We also have NATO allies and a U.N. mandate because the world sees our invasion of Afghanistan as defensive. There is no one out there capable or willing to hurt us the way we hurt the Russians, so we will not take the casualties necessary to turn the American people against the war.

The new winning strategy we are employing involves looking at the war in Afghanistan as a regional issue rather than just a counter-terrorism issue.

This shift began to occur with the arrivals of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Gen. David Petraeus. It was cemented as U.S. foreign policy when candidate Obama said that to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan, we had to defeat them in Pakistan.

The Taliban's existence is a consequence of tensions between India and Pakistan. These tensions began when Pakistan split from India in 1946 after both gained independence from Britain. Since then, Pakistan and India have fought three major wars, all of which Pakistan lost. These defeats convinced elements in the Pakistani military and Inter-Services Intelligence Agency that Pakistan needed a new strategy.

They decided to encourage the creation of insurgent groups to bog down Indian troops in the disputed border regions, especially Kashmir. The ISI and the military then supported the Taliban in its bid to take over Afghanistan in the 1990s so as to create "strategic depth." This meant they planned to retreat into the arms of Islamist allies in Afghanistan if India took over Pakistan.

The recognition in Washington of Pakistan's security concerns vis-à-vis India allows us to address this problem directly. Instead of bombing the Taliban in Pakistan ourselves, our policymakers now look at how to reduce tensions between India and Pakistan so Pakistan can move troops from the Indian border to the North West Frontier Province and deal with the Taliban themselves.

The Pakistani army is proving in the Swat Valley that they can defeat the Taliban, but they need more troops to keep the peace.

The Taliban have committed a series of public relations mistakes which is costing them the battle for the hearts and minds of the Pakistanis. First, they assassinated Benazir Bhutto, an extremely popular former prime minister. The Pakistanis reacted by voting in her Pakistani Peoples' Party and its anti-radical platform.

Then the Taliban broke a peace deal with the Pakistani government in the Swat valley in the NWFP by invading the neighboring province of Buner. This prompted the people to support a swift military retaliation, which they had previously opposed for fear of civilian casualties.

The recent bombing of a mosque in the NWFP has turned the tribesmen in the area against the Taliban. Most critically, the Taliban circulated a video of their whipping of a young girl, who is begging for mercy.

These events exposed the Taliban as brutal warmongers, as opposed to righteous jihadists, in the eyes of the Pakistanis.

We are winning the war, but we have not won yet.

To finish off the Taliban, we must continue to support the tribesmen in NWFP who want to throw off the Taliban's oppression with intelligence, guns and money. We must continue to press India and Pakistan on resolving their disputes to free the Pakistani army from defending the Indian border. And most urgently, we must continue to give aid to the Pakistanis displaced by the army assault on the Swat Valley (we have already pledged $1.6 billion). We are on the right track, we just need to hold the course.

Samuel Wilder King II is a Punahou '02 and Georgetown '06 graduate. He served as a political consultant in Baghdad from March to December 2008 and has traveled extensively in the Middle East. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.