Who Will Rule?

By Massimo Calabresi/Washington

At the high-walled villa of Afghan warlord Gul Agha Shirzai, the horse trading has already begun. On the edge of a magnificent carpet in his vast reception room, Shirzai holds court daily, propped against a bolster, surrounded by whispering attendants and discreetly armed bodyguards. For the past month, a steady stream of low-level tribal leaders from across the border in Afghanistan has appeared at his ornate doors in Quetta, Pakistan, seeking an audience with a man they expect will soon return from a five-year exile. His contacts and prominence--Shirzai heads an ancient and powerful clan--make him a strong contender to replace the local Taliban leaders if they fall in the southern region of Kandahar where he was once governor.

Shirzai, a robust, middle-aged man, has been currying favor himself, furiously networking, Afghan-style. On Sept. 15, he dispatched an envoy to the newly arrived U.S. ambassador in Pakistan, Wendy Chamberlin, in hopes of gaining American backing. And last month he sent an envoy to Rome to pay respects to the aged, deposed Afghan King, Mohammed Zahir Shah, whom the U.S. has tapped as a symbolic rallying figure for post-Taliban Afghanistan. But if Shirzai is following the age-old Afghan custom of building bridges, he is also following its equally venerable tradition of nursing grudges. His clan is part of the Pashtun ethnic group, which, with 40% of the population, is Afghanistan's biggest. Shirzai is wary of the forces of the Northern Alliance, who are mostly Tajiks (25% of all Afghans) and Uzbeks (6%) and who are poised, should the Taliban fall, to greatly expand the limited terrain now under their control. "If the West allows the Northern Alliance to gain an upper hand, it will be a terrible mistake," says Shirzai.

Shirzai's calculus--leveraging alliances above and below while handicapping one's enemies--is being repeated on every level of Afghan society as the leaders of the country's numerous tribes peer through the fog of war to glimpse a post-Taliban future. They are not alone. Each of the bordering nations--Iran, Pakistan, China, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan--has its preferred outcome and is working to secure it. Further afield, the U.S. and its allies are waking up to their need for a stable postwar Afghanistan. Without it, U.S. officials say, there is no way to prevent the country from continuing to serve as a haven for terrorists. "[We] should learn a lesson from the previous engagement in the Afghan area that we should not just simply leave after a military objective has been achieved," President Bush said at his press conference in Washington Thursday. But given the complexities of the Afghan tribal structure, the monstrous poverty afflicting the country and the competing views of its neighbors, Bush may find staying in Afghanistan as unappealing as leaving is. The message of history: If you think war in Afghanistan is hard, wait till you see peace.

Afghanistan faces stark challenges. Though rich in natural gas, minerals and precious stones, it has been living from hand to mouth, unable to capitalize on those resources because of the disruptions of decades of war. The illiteracy rate among adults is 64%. A quarter of Afghan children die before age five. Afghans have one of the world's lowest per-person caloric intakes (an average of 1,500 calories daily) and one of the highest rates of land-mine-related amputees (1 out of 273 people). Three years of drought on top of 22 years of war have produced widespread famine. Fighting and hunger have uprooted huge numbers of civilians. More than 3 million Afghans already huddle in bordering states, and the U.N. fears 1.5 million more will flee the country in the current fighting. When the war ends, the country and its economy will have to start from scratch.

How can the world uplift benighted Afghanistan when that time comes? "There's not a specific plan," admits a State Department spokesman. However, in the back rooms of the world's capitals, an outline is beginning to emerge. The U.N. helped persuade the ousted King to convene a grand assembly, traditionally known as a loya jirga. Three weeks ago, Zahir, who has broad support among his fellow Pashtun, met with representatives of the Northern Alliance in Rome and made a deal under which together they would appoint a council of 120 representatives to select as many as 1,000 tribal elders and respected Afghans for the loya jirga. That group would elect a transitional head of state to form a temporary government. After the drafting of a constitution, the return of refugees and the rebuilding of the country, another loya jirga would be called to amend the new constitution to allow for political parties and elections.

Skeptics argue that this is like having a plan for Middle East peace that consists of getting the Arabs and Israelis to sit down and talk. Previous loya jirgas--the first was in 1709, the latest in 1964--have produced good results. But cracks are already showing in the latest venture. The leadership of the Northern Alliance is committed to it, but the group's various factions are not of one mind. "It's just a ragbag of different forces," a senior British official says of the alliance. He says its Uzbek faction rejects the group's new military commander, General Mohammed Fahim, successor to the charismatic Ahmed Shah Massoud, who was assassinated Sept. 9. The Uzbeks do support a loya jirga, as do some other commanders, like Yousnou Kanuni from the Jamiat faction. But others, like Abdul Rasul Sayyaf of the Ittehad-i-Islami, don't. The alliance's titular foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, complains that with the loya jirga, the U.S. is attempting to put a 19th century template on 21st century Afghanistan.

To placate such skeptics, the U.S. and the King have sworn they are not trying to bring the monarchy back. "He is not a pretender to the throne," says the King's longtime lieutenant, General Abdul Wali, also an exile in Rome. For their part, the southern Pashtun are enthusiastic about the loya jirga. They say once it is convened, they will come up with a workable compromise for governing the country.

Though most outside powers including, crucially, Iran, Pakistan and Russia, have signed on, keeping them on board may prove tricky. Once the loya jirga is convened, the real horse trading will begin. Says a senior U.N. official: "This is where we want the U.S.'s new engagement and immense power applied--to lean on the neighbors to pull in the same direction. Any one of them could mess it up."

Iran and Pakistan are particularly interested in the future shape of Afghanistan's government. Pakistan despises the Northern Alliance because of its tilt against the Pashtun (also represented in Pakistan), its ties to archrival India and its disastrous rule of Kabul from 1992 to '96. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is blunt: "Their return would mean a return to anarchy and criminal killing." For its part, Iran, whose Muslims belong mainly to the Shi'ite branch of Islam, has backed members of the Northern Alliance representing Afghanistan's Shi'ite minority. On the sidelines of last week's meeting of the Organization of Islamic Conference in Qatar, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi conferred with his Pakistani counterpart, Abdul Sattar, and outlined Tehran's minimum requirement: a broad-based government that guarantees minority rights.

Much of the responsibility for postwar Afghanistan is expected to fall on the U.N. and its newly named envoy to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi. Bush, the Europeans, the Arab nations and Afghanistan's neighbors now say the international body should take the lead in postwar Afghanistan.

No one yet knows what the U.N. will do, but its mandate will be largely determined by the U.S., working behind the scenes. "Nothing happens at the U.N. unless the U.S. supports it," says a senior U.N. official. There will certainly be a civilian arm, helping oversee aid distribution and reconstruction (in fact, the U.N. retains a skeletal local staff in Afghanistan, distributing thousands of tons of food and supplies). There is also likely to be a security arm of some sort, to "provide confidence," as American officials put it. U.N. officials say they envision a force under U.N. commanders. The U.S., however, thinks a force mandated by the U.N. but under independent commanders would fare better. France believes that any force should be concentrated largely around Kabul, and says it is willing to send troops. The general feeling is that the force should be predominantly, if not exclusively, Muslim.

U.S. Defense Department sources say the department is engaged in "intense discussions" about possibly deploying some U.S. forces to help rebuild Afghanistan. They tell TIME that a planning team of civil-affairs experts from the U.S. Army special-operations command is on its way to the region to begin investigating how Army civil-affairs soldiers could help.

But senior Administration officials say chances of U.S. troops' playing a long-term reconstruction role are "zero." Some scoff at the idea of a peacekeeping force at all. "If the Afghans can't sort this out themselves, an outside force isn't going to help," says a senior Administration official. Yet he admits the tide is against isolationists at the moment. "Peacekeeping is the flavor du jour. Talking about it shows how suave and sophisticated you are," he says.

For now, the rebuilders seem to have the upper hand, following Bush's apparent commitment during his press conference last week. But the price will be high. The U.S. and its wealthy allies will need to go well beyond the $320 million Bush has pledged so far, say senior Administration officials. "The need for reconstruction goes beyond just feeding people," says one. "Trying to bring this country back to just fending for itself--we're talking about billions of dollars, and the U.S. would have to ante up its fair share of that."

Of course, donors would first need a stable country to funnel the money to. If there is only one thing going for Afghanistan now it is the rare circumstance that so many regional powers are united with the rest of the world in pursuit of the country's stability. "It has to work," says General Wali. "It is the chance the Afghan nation has to regain its place among free and democratic nations." Chance is an appropriate word, especially without any odds attached. On the other hand, a chance is more than Afghanistan has had for a very long time.

--With reporting by Hannah Bloch/Islamabad, Greg Burke/Rome, Andrea Dorfman/New York, James Graff/Brussels, J.F.O. McAllister/London, Tim McGirk/Quetta, Azadeh Moaveni/Tehran, Paul Quinn-Judge/Jabal-Us-Seraj and Douglas Waller/Washington

With reporting by Hannah Bloch/Islamabad, Greg Burke/Rome, Andrea Dorfman/New York, James Graff/Brussels, J.F.O. McAllister/London, Tim McGirk/Quetta, Azadeh Moaveni/Tehran, Paul Quinn-Judge/Jabal-Us-Seraj and Douglas Waller/Washington