Abdul Salam Zaeef was 11 years old when his homeland was attacked and he fled with his family. It was 1980, and the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan to prop up a Communist government there.

When he was 15, Abdul secretly returned home to join the fight. “I did not know how to fire a Kalashnikov or how to lead men. I knew nothing of war,” he later wrote. “But the Russian front lines were a tough proving ground.” Battlefield conditions were severe: The Afghans faced incessant Soviet bombardment, having little food or first aid and sparse ammunition.

For the next several years, Abdul served under several commanders, including one Mohammed Omar. He came to have an intense devotion toward the lean, strong, respectful, attentive Omar, who lost one of his eyes in a battle.

After a brutal war, the Soviets withdrew in 1989. Abdul and various Afghan anticommunist forces succeeded in felling the government in 1992.

In the ensuing power vacuum, local warlords and criminals began to flourish. They became known for extortion, kidnapping, rape and enslavement. Mullah Omar, then a madrassa instructor, felt compelled to combat the corruption. He recruited Abdul Zaeef and other young men to confront the warlords and free their innocent captives.

Abdul and others swore loyalty to Omar. They reportedly freed some youths who had been stolen and repetitively raped by a warlord. They recruited students from Islamic schools and Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan. The movement grew, and began accumulating successes in ridding southern Afghanistan of corruption. Many Afghans viewed them as liberators. By November 1994, they had come to control the entire Kandahar province. Within two more years, they ruled the whole of southern Afghanistan and managed to take the capital city of Kabul.

They called themselves the Taliban.

As crooked as the self-serving warlords were, sadly, life under Omar’s Taliban proved a far worse nightmare for many. Wherever the Taliban ruled, it enforced a stringent version of Islam, banning an array of previously lawful products and activities, including television and movies, computers, photographs, alcohol, dancing, kite flying, stuffed animals, chess, and clapping during sporting events. It enshrouded women in the oppressive chador and forbade them to receive an education, hold a job or play sports. It forced men to grow beards and wear head coverings. Punishments for breaking the rules were severe, including public beatings and executions in sports stadiums.

You may fault Abdul Zaeef and the other men Omar surrounded himself with for their extremism, but you can’t condemn them for disloyalty. To this day, no senior Taliban commander has divulged the mullah’s whereabouts.

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Abdul frantically worked to prevent an allied attack on his country, reaching out to Western embassies, the United Nations, and other Muslim countries. Mullah Omar, however, was convinced the U.S. would never attack. He was wrong. Allied forces invaded and helped the Northern Alliance—a collection of anti-Taliban Afghans that had formed in 1996—oust the Taliban from power.

Since then, Afghanistan has reverted largely to corruption and warlordism. Only this time, there is an overlay of brutal insurgent warfare. The Taliban has proven extremely resilient, and violence has also come from sponsors in Iran, al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

Mullah Omar now lives in Pakistan. He has spent the last several years orchestrating attacks and yearning for the day when Western forces vacate and he can return home.

The United States is nine years and neck deep into a war it cannot bring to a successful end. The obstacles are as insurmountable as the terrain is inhospitable. America’s generals say they can’t win with force. The Taliban has expanded into the north and west of the country, areas U.S. and nato forces previously did not need to worry about; it has infiltrated the Afghan army and police forces. Last year the Taliban and other insurgent groups staged an average of 1,200 attacks per month, driving civilian and allied death tolls to record highs. Meanwhile, the government Washington has worked to install in Kabul is undeniably corrupt. And everyone in the country—from politicians to police to people to dedicated Islamist warriors—is banking on America shrinking its presence and eventually leaving, as promised, beginning next July.

For its part, America is more than eager to bring the war to a close. The difficulty is doing so in a way that doesn’t look like abject defeat. The military surge it staged this past summer is showing some success in pushing the Taliban back. But the cold truth is that these gains will only last as long as America’s presence remains.

Washington has concluded that defeating the Taliban is unrealistic. Reports last week suggest the Obama administration is hoping for an escape from the conflict through negotiations. Representatives of Mullah Omar’s organization have begun high-level talks with the Afghan government to hammer out an end to the war. According to the Washington Post, they are discussing a broad agreement that would bring Taliban officials into Afghanistan’s government. “This is how you end these kinds of insurgencies,” Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Afghanistan, was quoted as saying.

The governments in both the U.S. and Afghanistan hope, in other words, that the Taliban will return to power, but this time be nice about it.

President Obama insists he won’t do a deal unless the Taliban renounces violence and accepts the Afghan constitution. But to even think Mullah Omar would voluntarily accept such constraints is terribly naive, and Mr. Obama has hardly placed himself in a position to demand them.

Besides that, any deal that returns even “moderate” elements of the Taliban to power is likely to create as many problems as it purports to solve. The ethnic groups in the north—which comprise over half of Afghanistan’s population—are extremely hostile to the Taliban. The Northern Alliance leaders who drove out Omar’s Talibani in 2001 are fiercely opposed to seeing them back in power. If they reject the deal, the country could descend back into the civil war that plagued the 1990s.

In short, the quagmire that is Afghanistan has no solution. Not in the human realm. The grim reality is that this theater will continue to drain America of its strength, provide a haven for various forms of graft and depravity, foment elements of violent Islamic extremism—and sap people on all sides of their hope.

Abdul Zaeef, after being captured by U.S. forces, spent over four years in Guantánamo prison. He now lives in Kabul under government protection. In his book, released earlier this year, called My Life With the Taliban, he wrote that Afghanistan is “a family home in which we all have the right to live … without discrimination and while keeping our values. No one has the right to take this away from us.”

Abdul pines for peace in the homeland of his youth. As Ahmed Rashid wrote, “his final plea is for peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan. He says he does not believe in al Qaeda, but speaks as an Afghan patriot with strong Islamist leanings toward the Taliban.” Of course, the peace this man sincerely seeks will never be brought about by the terrifying policies that his spiritual mentor once imposed on his war-weary country.

Nevertheless, soon that peace will come. This country that has long illustrated the truth in the proverb, “when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn”—soon will exemplify its beautiful corollary: “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice” (Proverbs 29:2). At His Second Coming, the King of kings will break the quagmire, root out the corruption, end the misguided extremism—and then rule in righteousness. “Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him” (Psalm 2:10-12).

Jesus Christ will truly turn Afghanistan into a family home, where all will live free—free not only from discrimination, but also terror, intimidation and hatred. He promises, “I will give peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid.”