The United States Special Forces are working with Pashtun rebel leaders to stoke an insurrection against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. Among the prominent Pashtun rebel leaders are Mohammad Yunis Khales, local warlords who owe allegiance to the notorious exiled warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Hamed Karzai and Haji Abdul Qadir. The danger a factional fight amongst the various warlords looms large if a struggle for power breaks out in the eventuality of a delay in establishing a broad-based Afghan government.

In southern and eastern Afghanistan, former Pashtun leaders and commanders who had earlier quietly acquiesced to, or were literally purchased by, the Taliban have now rebelled against the latter. Khales, 80, a Pashtun mujahideen leader, who remained in Jalalabad throughout the Taliban's rule, has reportedly proclaimed himself as the governor.

According to reports, he claims to have liberated the city, capital of the Nangarhar province. Khales' fighters, who were co-opted by the Taliban and fought alongside the Taliban for five years, rejoined him. As soon as his fighters defected from the Taliban, Khales asked the Taliban to withdraw from Jalalabad, and declared himself as its governor. Now a genocidal spectre hangs over this eastern city because a spokesperson of Khales has warned, "Neither the Northern Alliance (NA) nor anybody else should try to enter Nangarhar."

Khales, born in 1919 in Khogiani, Nangarhar province, received his education in Islamic law and theology. After Daud's coup in 1973, he fled to Pakistan and joined Hekmatyar. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Khales defected from Hekmatyar's Hezb-e-Islami (Islamic Party) and established his own party under the same name. He was perhaps the only Afghan leader who frequently entered Afghanistan to join his forces in waging a holy war against the Russians and their local lackeys.

After the fall of the Communists in 1992, Khales was part of the Islamic interim government. He was one of the members of the Shuraa-ye Qiyaadi (leadership council), but held no other official post. However, instead of moving to Kabul, he stayed behind in his home province, Nangarhar. His party controlled major parts of this politically and strategically important province. The Taliban, however, brought the province under their command in September 1996.

Local commanders loyal to Khales' former comrade-in-arms, Hekmatyar, have evicted the Taliban from Logar province, which is adjacent to Nangarhar. Hekmatyar, presently based in Mashad, Iran, is reportedly upset about the NA capture of Kabul. Hekmatyar, born in 1947 in Konduz province, attended the faculty of engineering for two years in Kabul University. He became involved in Afghan politics while he was a student. He became a member of the Muslim Youth in 1970, and was imprisoned between 1972-73.

After Daud's coup in 1973, he fled to Pakistan. In 1975, he became leader of the Hezb-e-Islami-e-Afghanistan (the Islamic Party of Afghanistan). He worked as a saboteur against Daud's regime under the Bhutto government's directives. After the April coup in 1978, his party became one of the main resistance forces against Soviet occupation, and the Communist government.

Hekmatyar was the main recipient of the military aid offered by Western and Muslim countries to the Afghan resistance forces. After withdrawal of Soviet troops, he allied himself with Tanai, a well-known member of the Khalq Party, and staged a failed coup against Dr Najibullah's government in 1990. After Najibullah's fall, Hekmatyar and his party were involved in a bitter and destructive civil war against the late Ahmad Shah Massoud's forces over control of Kabul.

In 1995, Hekmatyar was forced by the Taliban to leave his military posts in Char Asiab, southeast of Kabul. In a deal with his archrivals, Rabbani and Massoud, Hekmatyar became Afghanistan's prime minister in May 1996. His government was overthrown by the Taliban in September 1996, after the latter captured the city in a military offensive. Hekmatyar fled to Iran and in May 1998. He briefly returned to Mazar-e-Sharif, but left for Iran subsequently.

In Taliban stronghold Uruzgan province, another Pashtun rebel leader, Hamed Karzai, is reportedly striking a deal with Taliban commanders to defect along with their forces. Karzai was Afghanistan's first deputy foreign minister during 1992-1994. At that time, the mujahideen who defeated the Soviets governed Afghanistan. This was before the emergence of the radical Taliban. After his father's murder last year, Karzai, 42, inherited the title "khan" (head) of the 500,000-strong Popolzai.

The Popolzai are the Pashtun clan, which traces lineage to Ahmad Shah Durrani, the Persian army commander who conquered the southern Afghan city of Kandahar and became the first king of Afghanistan in 1747. Because tribal position is of great importance in Afghan society, the mujahideen always trusted the westernised and moderate Karzai. The same went for the Taliban, who sought him out long before they seized power, and later offered him the post of United Nations ambassador.

The Kunar province has been reportedly taken over by the forces of Hasrat Ali, a commander who maintained a pocket of armed resistance to the Taliban. Ali is loyal to Haji Abdul Qadir, former governor of Jalalabad, who allegedly took millions of dollars of bribe to surrender to the Taliban in September 1996.

In eastern Afghanistan, Jalalabad might become the flashpoint for factional feud amongst the rebel Pashtun leaders. Things are also in great ferment in western Afghanistan, with General Ismail Khan slashing his way through Taliban defences, after capturing the city of Herat. Khan, born in 1946 in Shindand, Farah province, attended Kabul Military School and Military University. He was serving as a lieutenant in the 17th division of the army in Herat when the Communists took over control of the government.

In March 1979, he defected from the army, and participated in the uprising of the people in Herat against the Communists. After the uprising, he went to Pakistan and joined Jami'at-e-Islami party of Burhanuddin Rabbani. He became well-known among the Afghans, after he led his forces in the holy war against the Russians and their puppet government in western Afghanistan.

After the fall of Kabul to mujahideen, he became the governor of Herat. However, his military rule extended over most of Afghanistan's western provinces. After Taliban's emergence in Kandahar in 1994, Ismail Khan engaged in a tug of war with them for control over provinces, such as Helmand, Nimruz, Farah and Herat. He was defeated by the Taliban and fled to Iran on September 5, 1995. He later returned to northern Afghanistan and started regrouping his forces against the Taliban. However, after the Taliban's brief victory in northern Afghanistan in May 1997, General Malik (allied to the Uzbek warlor, General Abdul Rashid Dostum) turned Khan over to the Taliban, which sent him to Kandahar. He escaped from jail and returned to fight the Taliban from the territories of his ally, Dr Ebrahim, in central Afghanistan.

Ebrahim, born in 1968, is called Doctor because he took a first aid course in the 1980s. His brother, Mohammad Zaher was one of the first mujahids in the Ghwor province, where he led the resistance until his death in the beginning of the 1990s. Mohammad Ebrahim succeeded him, and fought the Taliban militia. Supported by Ismaël Khan, he controls parts of Taywara, Saghar, Toulak, Shahrak, Passawand, Porchaman, Doulina, Zirnay, Farsi and Moshkan districts, located in Ghor, Farah, Herat and Helmand.

Meanwhile, in Kabul, there are reports of disagreements amongst the NA leaders. Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was Afghanistan's president-in-exile has redeclared himself as president, and has reportedly reached Kabul. But a prominent NA leader, Younus Qanooni, has warned that Rabbani is not acceptable as president. Qanooni was a very close aide to Ahmad Shah Massoud. During the 1980s, he was in charge of the relation between the Jami'at-i-Islami, which is led by Rabbani, and the ISI (Inter Services Intelligence, Pakistan) who provided them with money and weapons. When Massoud decided to create the Shura-i-qomandanan (commander council) in 1987-1988, Younus Qanooni was appointed spokesperson and chief of the political bureau.

During the mujahideen government in Kabul, he served as spokesperson and was appointed co-defence minister in 1993, when president Rabbani agreed to dismiss Ahmad Shah Massoud to pacify Hekmatyar. Since the beginning of 2001, Qanooni led several official missions to Europe and Rome to meet important Afghan figures and groups. He described the Taliban regime as a symbol of "Pakistani aggression", and is a forceful Afghan voice on establishing durable peace by allowing the people of Afghanistan to freely express their political will. This is his basis for rejecting Rabbani's self-declaration as the president of Afghanistan.

The other Northern Alliance leaders who will play an important role in the formation of a broad-based government in Afghanistan are listed below:

Abdur Rashid Dostum was born in 1954; Khowja Dokoh/ Juzjan Province. Dostum is one of the most controversial figures in recent Afghan politics. He was commander of the Juzjani "Dostum Militia" in late 1985 with 50,000 regular militia forces in the northern provinces of Afghanistan. Then, he joined with Dr Najibullah's government and fought against the mujahideen. He was awarded the "Hero of the Republic of Afghanistan" medal by President Najibullah. He was a member of Hezeb-e-Watan/Homeland Party/ former PDPA. In 1992, he distanced himself from Najibullah, and joined the mujahideen during the transition of power in Kabul in 1992. Gradually, he broke away from the mujahideen government, and established the "Itehad Shamal/Northern Unity" organisation. His forces successfully recaptured Mazar-e-Sharif, which triggered the collapse of Taliban in Kabul. Presently, his forces control most of the northern provinces of Afghanistan.

Mohammad Qaseem Fahim was appointed as the new defence minister of the Islamic State of Afghanistan after the assassination of Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud on September 9. Fahim worked as Massoud's deputy in military affairs, and commander of the mujahideen in the northern sector. After the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in 1996, Commander Fahim was appointed the commander of mujahideen forces north of Kabul. Later, he was transferred to the north of the country. Fahim was appointed minister of national security in the mujahideen government in 1992. He also served as the commander of the state's forces in Kabul for four years. He was born in Immerse, a village in the Panjshir Valley, in 1957. After the Communist coup of 1978, he became a refugee in Peshawar. One year later, he returned to Panjshir, and began to work under Commander Massoud.

Abdul Karim Khalili is head of the Shia party called Hezb-e-Wahdat-e Islami (Islamic Unity Party). His main base is located in Bamiyan Province in central Afghanistan. He is a powerful member of the NA. In the summer of 1998, the Taliban inflicted one military defeat after another on his forces in northern Afghanistan. His forces, and that of his allies, were driven out of the provinces of Jozjan, Sare Pol, Balkh, Samangan and Baghlan. Later, the Taliban were able to capture his main bastion, Bamiyan.

Mohaqeq, Haji (Ayatullah) Mohammad is a high-ranking official of Hizb-e-Wahdat. He has been a staunch opponent of the Taliban. Officially, Mohaqeq is chairperson of the political committee and administrator of the Northern Areas for Hizb-e-Wahdat-e-Islami. Mohaqeq has led numerous successful attacks against the Taliban movement in central Afghanistan.

Professor Abdul Rasul Sayyaf heads the Ittehad-e-Islami Azadi Afghanistan (Islamic Union for Liberation of Afghanistan), a radical Islamist movement, and an adherent of the Wahabi movement supported by Saudi Arabia. Sayaf was Rabbani's deputy in Pakistan in 1971. He was imprisoned between 1974-1980 for pro-Wahabi activities in Afghanistan. The Kabul regime freed him after the Saur Revolution in 1980. He is ideologically close to the groups of Hekmatyar and Khales. He has not been in the good books of the US because of his radical Islamist stance. Since the Taliban's capture of Kabul in September 1996, Sayyaf has overseen the NA troops from his base in Gulbahar, a village at the mouth of the Panjshir Valley that serves as the rear headquarters for the NA troops stationed on the frontlines north of Kabul.

In the intricate Afghan mosaic of ethnicities, clans and tribes, numerous Afghan political parties will play an important role in forging a common ground and a common Afghan national identity. These parties, either with the Taliban or the NA, are listed below:

Party: Harakat-i-Islami
English name: Islamic Movement
Leader: Mohammed Asif Mohseni
With the United Front


Party: Harakat-Inqilab-i-Islami
English name: Islamic Revolutionary Movement
Leader: Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi
With the United Front


Party: Hizbi Islami - Gulbuddin
English name: Islamic Party
Leader: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
Independent


Party: Hizbi Islami - Khales
English name: Islamic Party
Leader: Yunis Khales
Earlier supported the Taliban.
Has joined the Pathan Opposition after the fall of Kabul


Party: Hizbi Wahdat - Khalili faction
English name: Islamic Unity Party
Leader: Abdul Karim Khalili
With the United Front


Party: Hizbi Wahdat - Akbari faction
English name: Islamic Unity Party
Leader: Mohammad Akbar Akbari
Earlier supported the Taliban. Has joined the Pathan Opposition
after the fall of Kabul


Party: Ittihad-i-Islami Barai Azadi Afghanistan
English name: Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan
Leader: Abdul Rasul Sayaf
With the United Front


Party: Jabha-i-Najat-i-Milli Afghanistan
English name: Afghanistan National Liberation Front
Leader: Sibghatullah Mojadedi
Independent


Party: Jami'at-i-Islami
English name: Islamic Society
Leader: Burhanuddin Rabbani
With the United Front


Party: Jumbesh-i-Milli Islami
English name: National Islamic Movement
Leader: Abdul Rashid Dostum
With the United Front


Party: Mahaz-i-Milli-Islami
English name: National Islamic Front
Leader: Sayed Ahamad Gailani
Independent


Party: Taliban
English name: Students
Leader: Mullah Mohammad Omar
Afghanistan is now in the hands of warlords, parcelled and carved up in accordance with the territories they control. International efforts to facilitate the creation of an interim broad-based government in Kabul have not been able to unify the various Afghan ethnicities. A group of Afghan expatriates led by King Zahir Shah has been desperately trying to forge a pan-Afghan nationalistic government, which will engage in rebuilding the war-ravaged country. The United Nations and the US have appointed point-persons to bring all warring Afghan factions together. The international community, led by the US, have committed themselves to organise a multi-ethnic and representative government in Kabul that protects the interests of all Afghan ethnicities.

The US and its Western allies want to include moderate elements of the Taliban in any future government set-up in Kabul. But countries like Russia, Iran and India emphatically say that there can never be moderate Taliban. The problem in forming a broad-based government reflects the classic challenge that has troubled Afghanistan's nationhood - how to unify the disparate tribes and ethnicities. The Taliban are Pashtuns, and Pashtuns comprise 40 per cent of the Afghan population. The rest of the population are composed of other ethnicities, like the Afghan Tajiks, Afghan Uzbeks, Hazaras and Ismailis.

The Pashtuns themselves are split along tribal and clan lines, and spill over on either side of the Durrand Line dividing Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Taliban's core members are Durrani Pashtuns from Kandahar and southern Afghanistan, and they have had trouble integrating themselves with their close ethnic kin, the Ghilzai Pashtuns from eastern Afghanistan, and around Kabul.

In 1992, 14 years after Afghan Marxists assumed power in a coup, and three years after the former Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan, war broke out between mujahideen forces who fought a guerrilla war against the Red Army. Almost a decade later, a similar situation threatens to tear asunder international efforts to cobble together a broad-based Afghan government. Less than a week after Taliban withdrew from Kabul, and the NA established control in the capital, the bloody and destructive anarchy of 1992 has come back to haunt the Afghans.

In southern Afghanistan, various Pathan (Pashtun) tribes have shrugged off their alliance with the Taliban (also Pashtun) in an uprising. This has liberated vast tracts of the Pashtun heartland from Taliban control. Meanwhile, the Northern Alliance, a coalition of northern Afghanistan ethnic groups, who have been waging a war against the Taliban, have "liberated" Kabul.

Ironically, the Northern Alliance plea that it occupied Kabul to effectively fill the power vacuum created by the dramatic collapse of the Taliban might itself lead to a bigger and more dangerous power struggle. Though the Pashtuns in Kabul, and in the rest of the Pashtun heartland in the south, are visibly happy with the collapse of the oppressive Taliban, it will be difficult for them to accept a non-Pashtun set up in Kabul.

In southern Afghanistan, the US Special Forces have been actively assisting Pashtun tribal leaders opposed to the Taliban to foment an insurrection against the Taliban. Anti-Taliban Pashtun commanders and tribal leaders are rallying thousands of tribespersons and attempting to lure Taliban defectors. But there is growing resentment among the anti-Taliban Pashtun leaders about the NA's seizure of Kabul.

The fear is that factional feuding among the anti-Taliban Pathan opposition, in-fighting among the NA constituents, and a renewed civil war between the various Pathan factions and the NA, might undermine Afghanistan's political reconstruction. This kind of factional intra-Afghan bloodbath will be reminiscent of a clash between the combined forces of General Abdul Rashid Dostum (Uzbek) and Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud (Tajik) against Pathan commander of Hizb-i-Islami, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, in 1992.