A post-Taliban scramble for power

JALALABAD, AFGHANISTAN - Aghanistan is now entering the bumpy - and risky - transition phase between war and peace.

Here in this eastern Afghan city, looting and fighting continues while anti-Taliban factions jockey for political power.

On a national level, the same postwar positioning is starting. Deposed Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani returned to Kabul for the first time in five years on Saturday. Perhaps assuming that possession is 9/10ths of the law, he took up residence in Palace No. 1. He met yesterday with UN envoy Francesc Vendrell, who is pushing hard this week to create a broad-based interim regime. But there is already bickering over just where to broker a deal.

On the battlefront, US warplanes continued to pound an estimated 3,000 Taliban, Pakistani, and Arab fighters who control the northern city of Kunduz. At press time yesterday, an opposition commander said the Taliban had offered to surrender Kunduz provided there was a guarantee of safety for bin Laden's foreign fighters.

Iran delayed a 15-truck aid convoy yesterday after a gunfight broke out between two anti-Taliban factions in Herat.

In the southern city of Kandahar, there was no sign that the Taliban were ready to withdraw from the power base they captured seven years ago, despite reports on Friday that they negotiated a withdrawal that would leave the city in the hands of fellow ethnic Pashtuns.

Here in Jalalabad, the eastern Afghan city that was abandoned by the Taliban last Monday, the transition of power is rocky. Looting and lawlessness are still apparent, and residents are wary.

"The people who are in power now will repeat the same mistakes," says Shamsul Haq, a drug-control officer who served both for the Taliban and the previous mujahideen governments. "In the last three or four days you are witnesses of what they are doing. They are looting in the offices and they have returned to the same positions. I don't think it will be a healthy administration."

It's a situation that mirrors the fractious condition of Afghanistan itself, but instability and lawlessness among the Pashtuns - Afghanistan's largest ethnic group - could have effects far beyond the mud-hut oasis and rich farmlands around Jalalabad. The reason has as much to do with history as with Afghanistan's complex ethnic makeup.

Pashtuns have always dominated Afghan politics and they have the greatest potential to undo any peace plan or any chance for a truly stable Afghan government. If Pashtun warlords here cannot restore peace in their homeland, they may be shut out of power in the central government of Kabul, which is currently composed of ethnic minorities. And if history is the gauge, any government that excludes Pashtuns is a fragile one.

The man who arrived in Jalalabad first on Monday claims the traditional right to divide the spoils. That man was Hazrat Ali. A warlord of the Nooristani minority who arrived just two hours after Taliban governor Haji Kabir left Jalalabad. Mr Ali's speed assured him not just control over most of Jalalabad but a position in the next government as minister for law and order.

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