After hearing Barack Obama talk about looking for Taliban moderates, one apparently has volunteered to be Obama’s partner in peace.  Unfortunately, Mullah Omar hardly qualifies as a “moderate”, given the brutal nature of his rule in Afghanistan before the US deposed him following the 9/11 attacks.  Will Obama talk with Omar?

Mullah Omar, the supreme leader of the Taliban, has approved the talks aimed at ending the war in Afghanistan, with a top aide of the one-eyed cleric taking part in the Saudi-sponsored peace negotiations, a news report said on Sunday.

“Mullah Omar has given the green light to talks,” said one of the mediators, Abdullah Anas, a former friend of Osama Bin Laden who used to fight in Afghanistan but now lives in London.

“A big, big step has happened,” Anas was quoted as saying by The Sunday Times today. “For the first time, there is a language of . . . Peace on both sides,” he said.

In one sense, Obama may not have much to say about it.  Hamid Karzai has to make the decision about how much accommodation he wants to make with his fellow Afghanis in exchange for peace.  Afghanistan is much more of a civil war than Iraq was, even at the worst of times, and its resolution will come through some level of reconciliation.  If Karzai chooses to engage with Omar, Obama won’t be able to prevent it, and if Karzai wants nothing to do with Omar, Obama will have only a limited influence in pushing the two together.

The notion seems absurd on its face, however, and it doesn’t help Obama to have Omar making this move.  Many critics of Obama’s “moderate Taliban” remark insist that the phrase is an oxymoron.  Perhaps that’s not strictly true, but the idea that Omar is a moderate anything is laughable.  Omar believes in strict imposition of shari’a law as a governing force and imam rule, proving both during his catastrophic reign of terror.  Are we to believe that Omar suddenly has an affection for democracy and secular politics, and that he’d be willing to bargain away shari’a in negotiations?   Omar epitomizes the oxymoron.

Either Omar thinks he can manipulate the Obama administration into allowing him to re-establish his movement in Afghanistan in the guise of a political party, or he’s more desperate than we think.  If it’s the latter, we can gauge his sincerity by asking him to deliver Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the rest of al-Qaeda’s leadership.  If it’s the former, Omar will balk outright.