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Factional divisions already showing as alliance warlords move into Afghan cities

By Kathy Gannon, Associated Press, 11/18/2001 15:25

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) Less than a week after the Taliban were driven from Kabul, 3,000 Shiite Muslim fighters are poised outside, demanding a share of power. Major cities are now warlords' fiefdoms, and the idea of a broad-based government is being challenged by hastily multiplying posters of factional leaders.

While the United Nations is trying to organize a power-sharing conference, it must move quickly or Afghanistan could suffer the same anarchy and division that paved the way for the Taliban's rise in the last decade.

The sudden collapse of the Taliban throughout much of the country has left a power vacuum which the arrival of the northern alliance into Kabul last week only partially filled.

The alliance is a coalition of five groups mostly representing ethnic minorities which were driven from power by the Taliban in 1996 and which rallied together because of their common hatred for the Islamic militia.

In areas vacated by the Taliban, former warlords such as Ismail Khan in the western city of Herat and Rashid Dostum in the north's Mazar-e-Sharif simply took back control of their old fiefdoms.

The same pattern could well emerge in Kandahar if the Taliban finally give up their southern birthplace and stronghold. In Kandahar, the Taliban are being challenged by ethnic Pashtun tribal leaders who were themselves displaced when the militia emerged there in 1992.

In the capital Kabul, the situation is potentially more explosive. Kabul has an ethnically mixed population and is the symbol of national power.

However, the troops who entered the capital Tuesday were primarily from one alliance faction the Jamiat-e-Islami of former president Burhanuddin Rabbani and of Ahmed Shah Massood, the military strategist assassinated in September. Most members are ethnic Tajiks.

Nearly a week after the takeover, posters of Massood and Rabbani have been plastered on most government buildings. Rabbani has declared that he is the legitimate head of state and his resurrected government has taken control of all the key ministries and media outlets.

The armed men roaming the capital and patrolling neighborhoods come almost exclusively from the Panjshir Valley Massood's old stronghold. Ethnic Pashtuns, Afghanistan's dominant ethnic group and the base of Taliban power, are barely represented.

People are particularly nervous in Kabul's neighborhoods of Shiite Muslims a minority to the Sunni Muslim sect in Afghanistan and throughout the Islamic world.

''Of course it is dangerous. Where are our representatives?'' asked Abdul Hussain, a carpenter and member of the Hazara community, who are Shiites. ''Our representatives still haven't come into the city. How can we go to them for help?''

The leader of the Shiite Muslim faction in the alliance, Karim Khalili, said his group has brought 3,000 troops to Jalraiz, 25 miles outside the capital,to bring pressure on the new administration to share power.

Khalili asked the United Nations to move quickly to set up an interim government in the capital, warning that a delay could trigger factional fighting. But other alliance figures, including Khan, have said there should be no foreign forces.

Internal battles raged in Kabul when Rabbani ruled the country from 1992 until the Taliban toppled him, helped by public anger over the chaos.

''We want peace, but right now we only have one group in control of Kabul. There is no one to protect our people,'' Khalili said in a telephone interview. ''It is our idea that the United Nations should establish a temporary setup for two years.''

That temporary government should represent ''all tribes of Afghanistan,'' he said. Khalili wants elections after a two-year interim period, during which time U.N. peacekeepers would be deployed in Kabul.

In many provinces of Afghanistan, power has been diverted to local councils of elders, or shuras, who have appointed administrators connected to neither the northern alliance nor the Taliban. Rabbani told reporters Saturday he was trying to reach out to the local shuras.

During Rabbani's former term, Kabul had little influence over the provinces of Afghanistan, leaving them essentially in the hands of a few powerful, well-armed commanders.

-- Anonymous, November 19, 2001