Afghan power brokers

( Editor's note : On Monday, the opening session of the loya jirga was postponed one day because of "logistical and preparatory" problems, according to Afghan officials.)

For centuries, Pashtun elders have ruled this way: Circles of turbaned, robed men sat on dusty carpets, making their decisions under the wide bowl of the Afghan sky.

Today, dressed much the same way, and divided by many of the same regional, ethnic, and ideological differences of their ancestors, 1,500 Afghan leaders are gathering in Kabul for their most important loya jirga – or supreme council – in living memory.

All week, Pashtuns and Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks, and a myriad of other ethnic groups little known to the world before Sept. 11 will haggle over their country's future. Who among them will be chosen to lead the way? Can they turn a nation sundered by tribalism, Islamic extremism, resurgent warlords, poverty, and vicious discrimination against women into a stable, modern political entity?

Some of the delegates are women, some are refugees. Some have US college degrees, others are illiterate. All will be players in what promises to be the most diverse and closely observed election process in Afghan history.

Which ethnic groups and leaders will come out on top, as Afghanistan embarks on this experiment in representative democracy? Following are portraits of five of the potential key players who have their hands on the levers of power – from guns, to money, religion, tribalism, and politics. Any one of them – from the urbane, fluent English-speaking Hamid Karzai, to the powerful warlord of the southeast, Badsha Khan Zadran – could help or hinder the loya jirga process, thus supporting or undermining the effort to remove Afghanistan from the list of places where terrorists find a home.

SHEBERGHAN, AFGHANISTAN - When Abdul Rashid Dostum was a little boy, a flood swept through his village. Fearless, the future warlord rushed out to play in the rising waters. He was later found unconscious far from home. His exasperated mother began to tether him to her leg – or to a bedpost – to keep him out of trouble.

Later, as a schoolboy, he often fought with other kids, and regularly came home with his shirt in shreds. So his mother sewed him a thick, wiry mesh vest, a type of light armor traditionally worn by Uzbek warriors.

"It was good. It never tore. But the neck was too tight, and I almost choked," says Dostum, whose steely browed, stoic countenance cracks into the tiniest grin at a memory he says he's never shared. "I came back to my mother and said it wasn't suitable for fighting," he laughs. So she simply sewed him another.

But the last thing Dostum, now General Dostum, wants to be called is a warlord – "because I am not," he says. "I will never feel hurt if I am called a fighter. But if I am called a warlord, it hurts me. I have not just fought for the sake of fighting. I have always fought for my country's freedom."

Dostum and Afghanistan's many other warlords – the kinds of men who have ruled this country for centuries on the basis of tribal, ethnic, and geographical ties – have had many opportunities to fight in recent decades. But a love of freedom has not always been the guiding light of their struggle. A 10-year fight against the Soviet occupation, which ended in 1989 afforded many of these men the opportunity to obtain personal armies, political power bases, weapons, allies, and reputations. But in the post-Soviet years, shorn of a common enemy, the warlords of Afghanistan tore the nation apart – and fought a brutal civil war that opened the door for the Taliban, who were initially welcomed as a stabilizing influence for an increasingly fragmented nation.

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