“Elusive Moderates”

When Secretary of Defense Robert Gates received JINSA’s Henry M. Jackson Distinguished Service Award, he remarked upon his long personal search for “the elusive Iranian moderate.” We were taken by the phrase, “elusive moderate.” What makes them moderate, and why do they elude us? The U.S. government has also sought Palestinian moderates, with whom Israel could make a secure and lasting peace, and now “moderate Taliban” for peace talks in Afghanistan. They too, appear elusive.

When Secretary of Defense Robert Gates received JINSA’s Henry M. Jackson Distinguished Service Award, he remarked upon his long personal search for “the elusive Iranian moderate.” We were taken by the phrase, “elusive moderate.” What makes them moderate, and why do they elude us? The U.S. government has also sought Palestinian moderates, with whom Israel could make a secure and lasting peace, and now “moderate Taliban” for peace talks in Afghanistan. They too, appear elusive.

Vice President Biden seems more certain that Taliban moderates actually exist than Secretary Gates was of Iranians. The Washington Times reports, “In response to a question… Mr. Biden ticked off some percentages. ‘Five percent of the Taliban is incorrigible, not susceptible to anything other than being defeated. Another 25 percent or so are not quite sure, in my view, [of] the intensity of their commitment to the insurgency… and roughly 70 percent are involved because of the money, because of them being . . . paid,’ he said.”

One Qari Mohammad Yousuf, called a “purported (Taliban) spokesman” in a March 10th Reuters story, suggests otherwise. “This is illogical. The Taliban are united, have one leader, one aim, one policy… I do not know why they are talking about moderate Taliban and what it means. If it means those who are not fighting and are sitting in their homes, then talking to them is meaningless. This really is surprising the Taliban.”

Yousuf has a point.

To be Taliban is not like being Chinese or German, or even Sunni or Pashtun (which most Taliban are) – you aren’t born into it, you choose its aims, policies and leaders to be yours. The Afghan sitting at home is not Taliban. To be Taliban is by definition not to be moderate, and to say one is Taliban but doesn’t believe in the view of Islam that defines the Taliban is to be something else.

[Interestingly, as an aside, it works the same way for the good guys. As a Soviet prisoner, Natan Sharansky chose to risk everything for freedom while millions of other Russians sat home quietly and waited. Sharansky was not a “moderate.” Nor is Aung San Suu Kyi, nor was Nathan Hale.]

One might make a deal with that person sitting at home, or on his behalf – or with the “moderate” Hamas, or “moderate” Taliban – but, as Yousuf said, “talking to them is meaningless” because aren’t the ones fighting and they can’t stop the ones who are.

Millions of people would not take up arms against anyone, deplore religious and secular excesses and hope for enlightened governance. There are millions of moderates. But the people who make their rules, and have effective coercive power over them, are – by choice – not moderate. Moderates are physically elusive because they fear their own radicals. They are politically elusive because they can’t make a deal they can deliver.

Yes, some Afghans may be in it for the money. But surely no one would suggest negotiating with them any more than negotiating with the child soldiers of Sierra Leone. Policy that relies on finding the “elusive moderate” is unlikely to succeed in the face of well-armed, determined radicals – in Afghanistan or elsewhere.