To most Americans, the term moderate Taliban would be an oxymoron, not unlike "middle-of-the-road Nazi"--just a joke in search of a punch line. So when Secretary of State Colin Powell cautiously endorsed Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's view that such members of the repressive Afghan regime might have a role to play in a future coalition government, many people shared the same reaction as the partisans in the conflict. Both the Northern Alliance's Foreign Minister and the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan declared defiantly, "There's no such thing."
In the murky terrain of Afghan politics, however, nothing is ever that cut-and-dried. While the...
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