(IPS) analysis

Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has drawn a parallel between the Northern Alliance's victory in Afghanistan and the Hindu festival of lights or Diwali, which fell last week. The festival celebrates the ''triumph of good over evil'' at the end of a mythological war.

India, which has backed the Northern Alliance of President Burhanuddin Rabbani, has every reason to celebrate its military victory in Afghanistan and the expulsion of the Taliban from Kabul.

The only time New Delhi officially dealt with the Taliban was in December 1999 when an Indian Airlines plane with more than 155 passengers on board was hijacked to Kandahar, the Pashtun tribal-dominated, Taliban stronghold.

India secured the release of plane and passengers in exchange for the release from jail and delivery in Kandahar of three top jihadist leaders, including Maulana Mohammed Azhar, chief of the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed jihadist group.

On Friday, Kandahar remained the only major Afghan city retained by the Taliban in the face of a relentless week-long sweep across the north of the country by the forces of the Northern Alliance assisted by heavy aerial bombing by the United States.

Rabbani, who was ousted by the Taliban from Kabul in a 1996 coup has already ruled out its involvement in a future dispensation, that is expected to take shape in Kabul under United Nations supervision.

That is a stand welcomed by India and also Russia, which has militarily backed the Northern Alliance. The Central Asian countries north of Afghanistan have ethnic links with the Tajik and Uzbek tribes which make up most of the alliance along with the Hazaras who are supported by Iran.

Inclusion of a 'moderate Taliban'

Pakistan is the only country which advocates inclusion of what it calls ''moderate Taliban,'' in a future government. Its military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, has suggested a peacekeeping force drawn from Islamic countries to take over Kabul pending the formation of a government.

But the Northern Alliance is firmly in place and its ambassador in India, Masoud Khalili has opposed any move to bring in a peacekeeping force. He has pointed out that Rabbani enjoys legitimacy and is already recognised by the United Nations as President.

The UN Security Council has unanimously endorsed an Afghan political plan that envisages a two-year interim government bringing all ethnic groups under one umbrella with a multinational security force to protect them. Although the UN's preferred option is an all-Afghan force, the world body acknowledges that this is not expected to materialise primarily because of the factionalism among the country's main ethnic groups - Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras.

Meanwhile, 40 countries are reported to have so far volunteered troops for a proposed multinational force. These include Turkey, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Jordan, New Zealand, Pakistan, Canada and Denmark.

But the reality on the ground is that the essentially anti-Pakistan Northern Alliance is now in a position to decide which of the groups it wants to share power with and also to what extent.

''There is no need for any Islamic peacekeeping force. We are suspicious of anything that comes from Musharraf,'' Khalili told the Asian Age newspaper in an interview published on Friday.

Musharraf has also demanded the exclusion of India from the international consultative process on a new Afghanistan on the grounds that India does not have a common border with that country.

However, following hectic counter-diplomacy by Prime Minister Vajpayee, India has now been invited to a 20-nation consultative process that is to begin deliberations in New York on Friday to decide on a transitional government in Kabul.

Pashtun warlords battling Taliban

While New Delhi's animus to the Taliban is understandable, leading observers such Raja Mohan, strategic analyst for the Hindu newspaper, have warned against the dangers of excluding the majority Pashtuns, even if the community had formed the backbone of the now discredited Taliban movement.

Indeed the victories of the Northern Alliance have had the effect of turning the Pashtuns against the Taliban leadership and there are now new reports of fighting breaking out between Pashtun warlords and the Taliban in Kandahar.

Ambassador Khalili has repeatedly said that Pakistan ought to have no future role in Afghanistan because that country's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) was responsible for the creation of the Taliban and the present chaos in his country. ''We did not come this far to hand over Afghanistan to Pakistan again,'' he said.

Khalili predicted growing uprising against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, simply because the insular Afghans never liked the Pakistanis and other foreigners they had brought in, and who are now the object of lynchings across the country.

Pakistan's strategic importance to the US-led global coalition against terrorism is now growing more limited with bridgeheads operational in the Central Asian republics and bases in northern Afghanistan now available to them.

''With the vast strategic space opening up in Afghanistan, the Americans can now carry a smaller carrot but a bigger stick in handling Pakistan,'' writes Brahma Chellaney in an editorial page article in the Hindustan Times on Friday.

Chellaney is among Indian analysts who think that Pakistan's attention will now be drawn away from Kashmir and to the blurred boundary it shares with Afghanistan, whose legitimacy has long been challenged by the Pashtuns who straddle it.

The boundary, called the Durand Line, was drawn up by the British during colonial times and its validity expired in 1993. Even the Taliban at the height of its friendship with Pakistan rejected Islamabad's plea to renew the original agreement under which the border was drawn up.

Historically, Afghanistan has claimed territory up to the Indus river and even opposed the admission of Pakistan into the United Nations until the border question was first settled.

Anticipating trouble from its former allies, Islamabad has already fortified the once porous Pakistan-Afghanistan border and even moved troops and tanks to it.