(IPS) analysis

As the US-led coalition bombed targets in Afghanistan with high-technology weapons this week, India and Pakistan are jockeying for power and influence in the rapidly realigning dispensation in that country.

The rival South Asian countries hope to make maximum gains from rapid shifts in Afghanistan's complex military balances - and want a prominent role in any coalition that would replace the Taliban.

Their Afghan manoeuvres have exacerbated their contradictory positions on the thorny issue of Kashmir and launched a whole new sideshow in the 'anti-terrorist' drama now being played out.

Most recent attempts to cap India-Pakistan rivalry have been unsuccessful. The latest was a Monday night telephone call from Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, to Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

This sought to allay Indian concerns about Islamabad's involvement in an Oct 1 suicide bomb explosion in Srinagar, which killed at least 39 civilians. It is doubtful if Musharraf succeeded.

Just hours earlier, in a press conference in Islamabad, Musharraf had raised the issue of a post-Taliban arrangement. He warned against favouring the Northern Alliance (or United Front).

The Northern Alliance, comprising numerous guerrilla groups, including forces of the recently assassinated commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, bitterly opposes the Taliban and has fought it fiercely over the past seven years.

The Alliance right now controls just about a tenth of Afghanistan's land area, but has wide representation of ethnic groups, barring the Pashtuns, who are about two-fifths of the Afghan population.

Power vacuum

This was Islamabad's first public demand for a future role in Afghanistan. Talking of a power ''vacuum'' as the Taliban regime unravels, Musharraf demanded that the Northern Alliance should not be allowed to fill it because it represents only ''ten percent of Afghanistan''.

He asserted that Pakistan's Pashtun interests must be duly considered in the formation of a post-war government. (There are more Pashtuns in Pakistan than in Afghanistan.)

Musharraf's insistence that the Northern Alliance must not ''draw mileage out of'' the current anti-Taliban campaign derives from the Pakistani state's keenness to retain decisive influence over any regime that succeeds the Taliban.

Two days before the aerial bombing began Sunday, Musharraf extracted a categorical assurance from British Prime Minister Tony Blair that Pakistan has ''a valid interest in any arrangement for a future regime'' in Afghanistan that must adequately represent the Pashtuns. (The Taliban is almost entirely Pashtun in composition.)

By all available indications, Islamabad would be loathe to destroy the Taliban apparatus, consisting of 30,000 guerrilla fighters and its top hierarchy, many members of which were trained by its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.

It would much rather retain the core of it, including leaders of the three apparatuses that really matter - the nine-member military high command, and the Kandahar and Kabul 'shurras' or councils headed by Mullah Mohammed Omar. The London-based Guardian newspaper that the ISI plans to assassinate Mullah Omar and replace him with someone more pliable.

Islamabad would certainly want to preserve much of the Taliban organisation and personnel. The ISI has invested heavily in the Taliban and has been the Taliban's main source of military training, arms and finance.

It militarily insinuated the Taliban into Afghanistan in the first place. Seven years ago, the Taliban's troops overran Kandahar with ISI support, and have since grown through its patronage.

According to well-documented accounts such as Ahmed Rashid's awarding-winning book 'Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia', the ISI also put the Taliban in touch with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network in 1996.

This collaboration is important, indeed organic, to both groups. Al-Qaeda's own 5,000 fighters, called Brigade V-55, have been integrated into the Taliban's operational forces. Within Afghanistan, the two are militarily inseparable.

Broad-based coalition

However, Musharraf would like to limit the 'war against terrorism' to destroying the al-Qaeda network but in such a way that the Taliban is not decimated, but accommodated in power. Within the US-led alliance, his strategy appears to have prevailed over genuinely ''anti-terrorist'' approaches.

No broad-based coalition in Afghanistan can afford to ignore the Pashtun group. But it also cannot afford to ignore the other 15 ethnic groups, especially the northern and northeastern Tajiks, the central and western Hazaras, and the northwestern Uzbeks, who account for 60 percent of Afghanistan's population.

The Northern Alliance has said it will soon convene a broad-based assembly or 'loya jirga' of different tribal groups. But it is not clear which Pashtun groups - and there are many - will join such a council, leading to a new government.

Much will depend on the pace at which the Taliban regime collapses, and the military advances the Northern Alliance makes.

The Northern Alliance is supported by Russia, which is its main source of armaments, Iran and India. Today, it is coordinating its military plans with the U.S.-backed coalition using the bombing campaign as air cover for its own ground troops.

It is on this Northern Alliance that New Delhi wishes to build its strategy. It wants the Northern Alliance 's role enhanced. It is a sure bet that both India and Pakistan will want to be in any future condominium of states that determines or guarantees the future of Afghanistan, through, or independently of the United Nations.

Other features of the India-Pakistan rivalry have also been accentuated by recent developments. New Delhi is greatly disconcerted by Pakistan's inclusion into the US-led coalition as a frontline state. Pakistan is in the 'inner' concentric circle close to the states conducting the military attacks. Pakistan's airspace and intelligence support are vital to them.

India is in the 'outer' circle, beyond the peripheral ring of Islamic and Arab states that the United States is wooing. India regards Pakistan as a sponsor of ''cross-border terrorism'' in Kashmir. And it has itself been courting the United States to become its ''most allied ally'' in South Asia, and a potential "ounterweight'' to China.

Extremely upset

New Delhi was extremely upset at the Oct 1 Srinagar bombing, responsibility for which was claimed by the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed, whose leaders are based in Pakistan. A week ago, India warned Pakistan that its ''patience'' was running out. It lobbied the United States, Britain and France against Pakistan's support to Kashmiri militants.

One result of this has been Western pressure on Musharraf to drop the head of the ISI, Lt Gen Mahmood Ahmed, on Monday. Ahmed is said to have been close to the Taliban. A critical input into his sacking appears to be his failure to warn against the Oct 1 attack, and his suspected link with Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a Jaish-e-Mohammed militant who is believed to have remitted US$100,000 to Mohammed Atta, a prime suspect in the World Trade Centre bombing, just before Sept 11.

Western goading also persuaded Musharraf to telephone Vajpayee on Monday to convey his concern about the Srinagar bombing, promise an inquiry into it, and offer to resume the now-interrupted India-Pakistan dialogue. Whether this leads to more friendly exchanges, or greater suspicion, remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, the danger of any escalation of tension between South Asia's nuclear rivals is only too clear. Questions have arisen over the fate of the Musharraf government, which faces far-from-controllable mass protests in anger over the US-led attacks.

Increased strife or civil war in Pakistan, and a weakening or collapse of the regime, could suddenlydestabilise the entire region.