After eleven years of war, the loss of thousands of lives and the expenditure of billions – maybe trillions – of dollars on both aid and warfare, it now seems likely that to bring some sort of stability, if not actual peace, to Afghanistan, America and its allies will have to cut a deal with the very same Taliban leadership that they thought they had crushed in 2001.

Secret negotiations with the Taliban have been proceeding for the last two years. At some point the Taliban’s ruler of Afghanistan from 1994 to 2001, Mullah Mohammad Omar, might even have to be brought directly into the negotiations. He remains alive and well, is still the Taliban’s undisputed leader, and