It was hardly surprising that President Obama, in a 35-minute interview with The New York Times aboard Air Force One, pondered outreach to Taliban insurgents, if indeed "moderate" Taliban can be found. Obama knows that Afghanistan is now his war and that we are losing it. He also knows that appeals to our NATO allies to supply more troops have fallen on deaf ears.

Canada, Britain and the Netherlands, the only North Atlantic Treaty Organization units authorized to fight with U.S. troops in the Afghan theater, want their soldiers home by the end of 2011. The arrival of 17,000 additional U.S. troops in a country the size of France can make a difference in relatively small parts of a large theater. Defending Kabul against hit-and-run raids is now a priority.

Right after Sept. 11, 2001, our Canadian and European allies immediately invoked Article 5 of the NATO treaty -- an attack against one is an attack against all -- and enthusiastically signed up for the U.S.-led punitive expedition to chase al-Qaida and the Taliban out of Afghanistan. After the lightning-quick defeat of the Taliban, the allies figured on a little peacekeeping, a new Afghan government, a Western aid package -- and then home. But not eight years of peacemaking.

Nor did anyone figure that the Taliban and al-Qaida would regroup in the mountains of Pakistan's tribal areas and that the Pakistani army had neither the heart nor the counterinsurgency wherewithal to defeat them. In fact, Pakistan, under both President Asif Zardari and before him Pervez Musharraf, believes accommodation -- some call it appeasement -- would be the better part of valor. This is what Zardari negotiated in Swat, in Pakistan proper, with Taliban insurgents. He conceded Islamic Shariah law for a cease-fire. And this already has spread beyond the Swat Valley.

On Feb. 16 the North-West Frontier province conceded Shariah for the entire Malakand District, a large swath comprising the districts of Swat, Chitral, Buner and Shangla. Much of the local intrigue revolves around powerful politico-religious figures like Maulana Sufi Mohammad, the leader of the militant Tehrik-e-Nefaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi who, the government hopes, will rein in his son-in-law Maulana Fazlullah, who heads a more dangerous extremist faction (Tehrik-e-Taliban-Pakistan). According to Jane's Foreign Report, he burns down girls' schools and kills (often by beheading) artists, teachers, government officials, policemen and paramilitary soldiers.

In microcosm, this is what the United States and NATO face all over Afghanistan, or even worse, given its narco-state economy. After the U.S.-led invasion of Oct. 7, 2001, Sufi Mohammad "volunteered" some 10,000 to 15,000 jihadi teenagers to fight alongside the Taliban against coalition forces. Many died, and the rest were rounded up and quietly sent back to Pakistan.

Since those days, politico-religious extremist parties actually governed two of Pakistan's four provinces until defeated in national elections on Feb. 18, 2008. No longer encumbered with the responsibilities of government, slash and burn came back into fashion.

Gen. David Petraeus, the new CENTCOM commander, now responsible for both the Iraqi and Afghan theaters, does not believe negotiations are possible with "moderate" Taliban, as this is a contradiction in terms. He dismisses the talks about talks that went nowhere, initiated by Saudi King Abdullah in Mecca last Sept. 27-28, when he invited to dinner former Taliban Foreign Minister Mohammad Wakil Mutawakil and Afghan President Hamid Karzai's brother Mahmoud.

When Taliban leader Mullah Omar ordered the destruction of ancient Buddhist statues in Bamyan in early 2001, the "moderate" Mutawakil said Muslim clergymen in other countries who denounced the decision had "failed to cite verses of the Koran or Hadis (sayings of the Prophet Mohammed) in their favor."

Picking out moderate Taliban with credibility and the willingness to talk is one thing. Weaning them away from the insurgent extremists to make a deal is another. And making such a deal stick strikes most observers as mission impossible. Between 1964 and 1968, Vietnam "doves" thought a separate deal could be negotiated to end the war with the Vietcong, the communist insurgency in South Vietnam. The Vietcong, it was claimed in those days, was autonomous of, and even hostile to, Hanoi. There was a famous Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, the charming Vietcong foreign minister and a favorite on Western TV programs, who expertly cultivated the notion of independence.

It wasn't until after the Paris peace accords of January 1973 that the truth came out. The Vietcong, or the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, was created by order of the North Vietnamese Communist Central Committee in 1959 -- long before President Kennedy changed U.S. military advisers into fighting units.

Much as he would like to extricate the United States from the Afghan quagmire, Obama knows anything perceived as a U.S. defeat would be widely interpreted as a victory for al-Qaida -- and a defeat for the United States and NATO. Conversely, no peace treaty would mean much if neighboring states were not involved, including Iran. Hence, the U.S. idea of a U.N.-sponsored conference on Afghanistan March 31 with "key regional and strategic countries," as well as NATO members.

An immensely complex imbroglio for Obama.

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