(IPS) analysis

Starting war in an Afghanistan riven by fundamentalism and tribalism may have been the easy part for the United States, say experts who lament that Washington actually has little clue on a viable post-Taliban dispensation.

US President George W Bush's declaration that Washington is not into ''nation-building'' is precisely the kind of attitude that led to a decade of civil war and savagery in Afghanistan that followed the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, they say.

''Once the United States left the scene and did not undertake a nation-building effort of the type it conducted so successfully in Europe and Japan after the conclusion of World War II, the Afghans turned upon each other,'' writes Shahid Javed Burki, former Pakistan finance minister.

Burki, who once served as vice president of the World Bank, argues that the resources of the US-led coalition that are going to pour into Afghanistan should, this time around, be used ''more intelligently''.

Pakistan's main concern, as the country's military ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf stated at a press conference on Monday, is that any new regime that is going to be set up in Kabul should be friendly to his country.

Musharraf said he has made it known to President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair that the military action ''should not be allowed to be taken advantage of by the Northern Alliance'' that has been fighting the Taliban for some six years now.

Driven out

Pakistan's rival, India, is keen that the Northern Alliance of President Burhanuddin Rabbani, which was driven out of Kabul by the Taliban but continues to be recognised by the United Nations, regains power.

India, which for almost a decade now been secretly supporting the Northern Alliance, sees in the new situation a chance to regain the influence it once enjoyed in Kabul.

The assassination of the Northern Alliance defence minister, Ahmad Shah Masood, a couple of days before the Sept 11 aerial attacks on New York and Washington, were a blow to India's interests and bitterly regretted by India's foreign and defence minister, Jaswant Singh.

Russia, which has continued to maintain squadrons of helicopter gunships at a base in Tajikistan for the use of the Northern Alliance, can be counted on to lean on the United States to ensure that its proteges are not left out a post-Taliban structure.

To the west, Iran supports the Northern Alliance but is partial to the Hazara tribes who follow the Shia brand of Islam, rather than the orthodox Sunni variety followed in Pakistan and by Afghanistan's dominant Pashtun tribe.

Shia-dominated Iran, which initially showed signs of supporting the US- led coalition against terrorism, withdrew those once it became apparent that Washington depended heavily on Pakistan's support. Iran has since condemned the air raids on Afghanistan.

Smaller tribes

Most countries favour an arrangement which accommodates a broad-based, multi-ethnic set-up which takes into account the interests of the majority Pashtuns as well as those of the smaller tribes, the Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras and others.

An Indian foreign ministry spokesman said on Monday that New Delhi favoured the replacement of the Taliban with an arrangement which included ''all elements of Afghan society''. Indian Foreign Minister Singh was also quoted as saying the Northern Alliance would play a role after the Taliban.

Similarly, in his press conference, Musharraf said: ''Whatever the dispensation, it must be broad-based, it must be multi-ethnic, taking the demographic composition of Pakistan in view.''

But Musharraf warned that the void left behind by the Pashtun-dominated Taliban, must not be allowed to be taken over by the Northern Alliance, which, he charged, was being supported militarily by ''countries we know''. His reference could have been to India, Russia or Iran.

''Certainly the Northern Alliance must be kept in check so that we do not return to the period of anarchy,'' Musharraf said. The Northern Alliance is dominated by Uzbeks and Tajiks.

Musharraf said Pakistan was not averse to a plan to bring in the exiled king, Zahir Shah, again a Pashtun, although the former ruler has, in the past, questioned the validity of the Durand line that serves as the Afghan-Pakistan border straddled by Pashtun tribesmen.

Afghanistan has in the past claimed the Pashtun-dominated area between the Durand line and the Indus river called Pashtunistan as a part of its territory, and this has frequently led to aggressive troop movements along the boundary and to war rhetoric.

Afghanistan has colluded with Indian to put pressure on Pakistan to settle the Pashtun homeland issue - and this may be what prompted Musharraf to demand colourfully that India ''lay off'', in a televised speech explaining why Pakistan needed to support the US-led coalition in retaliation for the Sept 11 attacks.

'Freedom fighters'

A better-known complication to a quick, lasting settlement in Afghanistan is the dispute that Pakistan has with India over the possession of Kashmir, which is also a legacy of British colonial rule and which Musharraf calls ''the unfinished business of the partition''.

Officials here say Islamabad has been supporting violent insurgency in Kashmir by hosting on its territory 'jihadist' groups like the Jaish-e-Mohammed, which Musharraf reiterated on Monday are ''freedom fighters with a noble cause''.

However, Musharraf said a suicide attack carried out on the provincial assembly in Srinagar by the Jaish-e-Mohammed last week was condemnable for the high civilian casualties it caused.

At least 39 people were killed and hundreds injured in the attack, which prompted Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to demand that the United States include the Jaish-e-Mohammed in its anti-terrorist campaign.

In a paper 'Geopolitics of an Afghan Settlement' released earlier this year, Peter Tomsen, former US special envoy to the Afghan resistance - which became the Taliban - says the fighting in Afghanistan and the Kashmir insurgency are interconnected.

According to Tomsen, a settlement in Afghanistan must traverse two rings - an inner one of conflict among Afghans and an outer ring of nations maneuvering for influence inside Afghanistan.

Islamabad's deep involvement and interference in Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 was, in fact, prompted by its pursuit of ''strategic Islamic depth'' against India, Tomsen argued in his paper.