Global Policy Forum

By Greg Myre

As civil war raged in the mid-1990s, Afghans complained bitterly that the world was ignoring them, dismissing their nation as an incorrigibly lawless place that could be pitied, but not helped.

But starting Tuesday, the major powers will be peering over the shoulders of leading Afghan factions as they begin talks at a German hotel in the biggest effort yet to forge a political solution to one of the world's longest-running conflicts.

The United Nations has sponsored the conference outside Bonn as a matter of urgency. The United States and Britain, each with troops inside Afghanistan, have much at stake as the sides attempt to create a multiparty government to replace the Taliban regime.

If the talks succeed, Afghanistan could have its first stable government since the 1970s, and the international community is poised to offer hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of dollars to a bankrupt nation in desperate need of reconstruction.

"We are grateful that the United States helped bring down the Taliban," said Aziz Ahmed Rahmand, a history professor at Kabul University. "But we hope the world doesn't forget about us. We will need help from the Americans and the United Nations."

The pressure will be on the Afghans to make the most of an opportunity they haven't had before and may not see again. If they fail to set up a functioning government and slide into another round of factional conflict, the world is likely to lose interest and again write off Afghanistan.

The country has lacked a central authority, a legal system and most other trappings of government since the Taliban bugged out of the capital Nov. 13. With northern alliance leaders encamped in Kabul, and 3,000 of its soldiers on the streets, the capital is calm for now.

But fighting carries on in the south, where the Taliban and other ethnic Pashtun groups continue to resist the northern alliance, whose troops are predominantly ethnic Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek. Bandits are robbing U.N. food convoys. Local militias are emerging and could quickly entrench themselves if no central government takes control.

"Today Kabul is quiet. But I'm not very confident about the security in the city," said Francios Calas, a longtime aid worker in Afghanistan who now heads the Doctors Without Borders mission. "When the same leaders were here before, they couldn't keep order."

The northern alliance will be the most important of the four major groups at the Bonn conference, which is expected to run about a week and will attempt to agree on a 15-member council that would be the core of a new government.

The other three parties are all based outside Afghanistan, prompting criticism that the conference won't be dealing with the armed groups inside Afghanistan, most notably the Taliban, who still hold several southern provinces.

The four parties at Bonn say that the Taliban won't be part of a future government and that they want to keep the talks manageably small.

Younus Qanooni, the acting interior minister and the man in charge of security in Kabul, is leading the northern alliance delegation. It will have 11 seats, giving it a majority of the 21 places at the talks.

The northern alliance's leader, former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, will remain in Kabul, but he said Sunday that he was prepared to hand over power once an interim government is agreed on.

The former Afghan king, Mohammad Zaher Shah, remains at his home in Rome, but he will have four representatives at the conference, making it the second largest delegation. Two other movements will have three seats each. They are the Peshawar group, led by former guerrilla commander Pir Gailani, now based in Pakistan, and the Cyprus group, which is made up of Afghan exiles. While there is no single group purporting to speak for all Pashtuns, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, the delegations in Bonn will include Pashtuns.

"If the new Afghan government is to have any chance of success, it will have to be broad-based, it will have to include all the ethnic communities," said a U.N. spokesman, Eric Falt.

At a news conference Sunday in Kabul, the northern alliance's foreign minister, Abdullah, said no one should expect the meeting to resolve every issue facing the Afghans.

"But from the other side, I also believe that it will be a significant step toward a political settlement, and we hope that we would reach a tangible agreement which will be satisfactory to all sides, to all components of that meeting," he said.

If the first round produces the 15-member council as hoped, the next step would be to hold a national assembly, or "loya jirga," with hundreds of delegates representing parties and ethnic groups across Afghanistan.

If the assembly conferred its blessing, Afghanistan could have an interim government that would likely rule for about two years. The trick will be to make everyone feel included but not to allow the process to drag on interminably.

Afghans have vivid memories of the factional fighting in 1992-96 when Rabbani was president and rival armed groups flattened much of Kabul in fierce rocket exchanges that killed tens of thousands of civilians. The scene was always bloody - and sometimes absurd.

In 1993, Rabbani was in the presidential palace while at the same time warring with his prime minister, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whose men were on Kabul's southeastern hills.

For the rare Cabinet meeting, government ministers loyal to Rabbani would get into a convoy of cars and travel to Hekmatyar's base, returning to the city several hours later.

If the meeting went well, calm would prevail. If it went poorly, the fighting would resume. This doomed attempt at a multiparty government didn't last long, and the fear is that this bleak chapter could be repeated.

"The new government must come quickly, or it will be like 1992 all over again," said Rahmand, the history professor.

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