Global Policy Forum

by Bronwen Maddox

At last, we can see the faint outline of a United Nations plan for life after the Taleban. The imminent arrival in the region of the envoys who could broker this deal is the Americans' best hope of breaking their military deadlock.

The UN envoy for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, is due in the region this weekend. Richard Haas, the US's special envoy, should touch down soon after. Islamabad - and even Tehran - are looking forward to their arrival with something like relief, after a week of rising frustration with Washington.

To President Bush's team the UN has begun to look like a big part of the solution. The US and UN now seem to have agreed that Northern Alliance fighters should not be allowed to sweep into Kabul until there is a UN plan for a post-Taleban administration. So the US is released from its current dilemma: whether to bomb the Taleban front lines to let the Northern Alliance through. Not for the moment, or not very hard, is the answer. But now it needs the UN to get a move on. There is now a rough plan, it seems. The UN would supervise an interim administration of a dozen Afghan ministers from all ethnic groups. This would organise a Loya Jirga, the country's traditional grand council; that in turn might plan for elections.

If the Taleban collapse in stages across the country, there could even be a temporary partitioning of the country into tribal areas before the UN administration gets up and running, according to a notion discussed in London and Washington this week.

This plan - in fact, any UN plan with a bit of flesh on it - would not just ease America's predicament, it would also go a long way to relieve frustration among Afghanistan's neighbours, most of all Pakistan. Along with President Musharraf's growing confidence that he has contained the militant opposition has come real exasperation with American tactics.

Musharraf made clear he wanted a short bombing campaign. Instead, he has had three weeks of it, and no clue about how much more is to come. He wants an Afghanistan that is friendly to Pakistan; instead the Northern Alliance's chances of filling a post-Taleban vacuum have risen. Iran partly agrees with him even though it is a friend of the Northern Alliance. It knows that if the Northern Alliance took Kabul, civil war might follow.

Given those concerns, Afghanistan's neighbours want the UN to step up the pace. But Brahami's warnings about the hazards of the project have already strained their patience. They feel he has accentuated the negative in the face of real urgency. His comment that "Afghanistan is a very difficult country - they don't like to see foreigners there, especially in military uniforms" went down particularly badly. An organisation whose secretary-general has just received the Nobel Peace Prize might move a bit more quickly, some officials feel.

If the UN plan takes real shape in the next week, it is conceivable - just - that the American coalition could take Mazar-i Sharif and even Kabul before winter really descends. If it doesn't, criticism of American military tactics will rise, at home and abroad.

Meanwhile, others are jostling to fill the vacuum. Brahimi should keep an eye on this week's sprawling assemblies of thousands of Afghan tribal leaders in Pakistan and Turkey. They have their own ideas - and the odds are those would make the UN's plan rather harder.

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