Old guard crafts new Afghan rule

Some are men of peace. Others simply want a piece of the action.

Together, they are an odd mix of Afghan intellectuals and warlords, poets and smugglers, royalists and democrats, with little in common except the goal of bringing peace and an interim government to Afghanistan.

At marathon talks in Peshawar, starting today, this band of Afghan exiles will meet to create a political solution to the war in Afghanistan, and their own place in it.

In advance of the talks, the US gave the strongest sign yet of support for the Northern Alliance, a separate group opposed to the ruling Taliban. US jets yesterday staged limited airstrikes on front-line Taliban positions near the capital, Kabul, and the key northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif. Secretary of State Colin Powell repeated that the US would like to see the alliance take Mazar-e-Sharif. But he said reservations remained as to whether it would be "the best thing" for Kabul to fall.

The US has been waiting for key Afghan political players to gather here and make headway, say analysts, before giving military support to

a Northern Alliance march on Kabul. The alliance is a coalition of minority ethnic groups, mainly Tajiks and Uzbeks, and does not have the support of Pashtuns, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group.

In the rose gardens of newly acquired homes, with armed guards serving tea, the mainly Pashtun Afghan exiles in Peshawar say they are united in the face of a common enemy: the Taliban.

Each knows from past experience that today's ally can become tomorrow's foe. But for now, at least, there's no way to win the game unless you play.

There is reason both for caution and for hope, says Rasul Amin, a professor of literature at the University of Peshawar and a representative of former King Mohammad Zahir Shah in the negotiations. That reason is fatigue. "The people are fed up, both with foreign interference from outside Afghanistan and infighting in Afghanistan," he says.

"In these 23 years of war, we have experienced leftist ideology with the Soviets, mujahideen ideology, Taliban ideology, and they didn't deliver the goods. What the people want now is the right of self-determination, and then we can build a lasting peace."

Like the intellectuals and landed gentry who drafted the US Constitution, the Afghan exiles meeting in Peshawar have a lot riding on their shoulders. Their words drip with the honey of good intentions, promising peace, prosperity, inclusiveness, freedom of expression. But with a history of blood feuds, power grabs, corruption, and betrayal - and substantially different plans to achieve peace - these leaders have much work to do.

"We need to end the monopoly of the fighting club over Afghan politics," says Afrasiab Khattak, a Pakistani intellectual from the Pashtun ethnic group. "Some of these warlords are very shrewd people. They take on new identities. But unfortunately, the warlord culture is so deep, it's left no space for civil society in Afghanistan."

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