Anti-Taliban coalition shaping up

Former King Mohammad Zahir Shah has reached agreement with members of the opposition Northern Alliance to form a "supreme council of Afghan leaders" and discuss the political future of Afghanistan, according to news reports on Tuesday. The two sides met in Italy, where the 86 year-old Shah lives, and agreed to convene a traditional Loya Jirgah - or grand council of tribal chiefs, intellectuals and religious leaders - to discuss a potential replacement for the ruling Taliban Islamic Movement, the BBC reported. The Taliban's sheltering of suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden, implicated in the 11 September suicide attacks on the US, has led to the regime being targeted along with Bin Laden by the American-led international coalition against terrorism. It remains unclear whether the coalition will content itself with retaliatory strikes against the Taliban, or also attempt to overthrow the regime for protecting Bin Laden and its alleged hosting of other terrorist elements. The US administration has held meetings with the former king (a member of the majority Pashtun community in Afghanistan) and officials of the Northern Alliance, which consists mainly of Afghans of ethnic Tajik, Uzbek, Turkmen and Hazara origin. The political leader of the Alliance, Burhanuddin Rabbani, remains president of Afghanistan, in spite of having been ousted by the Taliban in 1996, and holds the Afghan seat at the United Nations. The UN has never given political recognition to the de facto Taliban government. In an apparent effort to mitigate the political effects of the new alignment of the Northern Alliance and Zahir Shah, the Taliban has indicated its willingness to share power with tribal or jihad (Islamic holy war) commanders in the provinces of Khost, Paktia and Paktika, which border Pakistan in southern Afghanistan, according to local and international news organisations. President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan said on Monday that the Taliban's days were perhaps numbered. Musharraf's government has been associated by the media in recent days with an alleged plan to oust Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar in favour of the more moderate acting head of the ruling council (and former foreign minister), Mullah Mohammad Hasan Akhond. Islamabad's interest would be in having more moderate Taliban elements strike a deal with the US over the Bin Laden issue and avoid a destructive war on their doorstep, according to regional analysts. In another scenario, Pakistan would at least have such elements, in addition to the Northern Alliance, included in any interim or transitional government. The Alliance has won new support from the international coalition against terrorism by virtue of its opposition to the Taliban. Pakistan has been implacably opposed to it since backing the Taliban religious movement to end the fierce infighting between different mujahidin, which followed the forced withdrawal of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan. Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdus Sattar has warned that any attempt to install the Northern Alliance in government would be "a recipe for disaster", and reportedly persuaded the US to bear in mind Pakistan's sensitivities and historic disputes with it. Meanwhile, the "Six-plus-Two" (comprising Afghanistan's neighbours: Iran, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and China - plus the US and Russia) talks, which the UN has been hosting without making much headway for the past four years are now being taken much more seriously, not least by the US, according to sources cited by the 'Guardian' newspaper in Britain on Monday. Pakistan was no longer defining "broad-based government" to mean the Taliban (which it backed until the geopolitical crisis which has followed the 11 September attacks on the US) having 90 percent of cabinet seats, and other groups sharing the remainder, the report stated. Islamabad was now "planning a coup to bring moderates forward", and adopting a more realistic position, the 'Guardian' said, citing Iranian officials. Although Pakistan's support for the Taliban had been disrupted, and the Afghan population was ready for a change of rule, the international community needed to be careful not to impose a new government without popular legitimacy, according to a regional analyst, Ashraf Ghani, writing in the UK-based 'Financial Times' newspaper. The US needed to engage wholeheartedly in Afghanistan rather than leaving the problems there to regional proxies, Ghani said. It also needed to work with the UN over a reasonable period of time to establish a broad-based interim government, if the Taliban was to fall or be removed. The US should avoid channelling support to discredited warlords and militias, but instead help establish a national army and police force, and offer a credible programme for the reconstruction of the country, he added. Afghans remained fearful of anarchy and war, and, if the use of force by the international coalition against terrorism led to large-scale civilian casualties, also of disruption of people's lives and a new exodus of Afghans to neighbouring countries which did not want them. Under such circumstances, "disenchantment with the Taliban could easily be turned into sympathy, and then support for a new militant movement in the region," Ghani stated. "This could be a time for a better future for Afghanistan, if the international community approaches the Afghan people as partners in its struggle against terrorism," according to Francesc Vendrell, head of the UN's Special Mission for Afghanistan, at a press conference in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, on Thursday, 27 September. However, the international community must be seriously committed to a lasting political solution, which would involve the establishment of a government that enjoyed both internal and external legitimacy, he said. "This must be a truly Afghan solution, allowing the Afghans - without outside political interference - to freely determine their future and to select a government that is committed to pluralism, respect for human rights and minorities, and friendly relations with all its neighbours," Vendrell added.