(IPS) comment The Afghan conflict continues to spring strange surprises.

Initially, there was the Taliban's amazing ability to resist and withstand the American military onslaught for more than a month, and then the swiftness of their unravelling, which wrapped up the first phase of the military campaign within a matter of days.

Basically, the Taliban will and capacity to resist was sapped under sustained carpet-bombing.

However, despite the most brutal bombing campaign in recent history, the Taliban managed to doggedly resist in the northern city of Kunduz. Only on Wednesday did they apparently agree to surrender following direct talks in Mazar-e-Sharif with Uzbek strongman Gen Rashid Dostum.

But they remain defiant in their stronghold of Kandahar, close to Pakistan's Baluchistan province.

In a Nov 21 press conference at their border town, Spin Boldak, Taliban supremo Mullah Omar's spokesman, Syed Tayyab Agha said, ''The Taliban will continue to fight to the death to defend our nation and religion,'' debunking rumours that the Taliban were negotiating to surrender Kandahar to other Afghan resistance groups.

Spheres of influence

Another surprise was the Northern Alliance's apparent rejection of the advice of their American handlers not to march into Kabul, for two reasons.

They made a virtue out of necessity given the Taliban's sudden and unexpected decision to withdraw from Kabul last week, and equally important, they decided to stake their claim to future power by the symbolism of being the first to enter a 'liberated' Kabul.

Now, when the Northern Alliance entered Kabul, just as when the Red Army exited from Kabul in 1989, a similar political vacuum is in place.

What is disturbing is the de facto division of Afghanistan intodifferent 'spheres of influence' in the post-Taliban phase.

Turkey, Uzbekistan and Russia back the Uzbek warlord Gen Dostum, who controls Mazar-e-Sharif, close to the border with Uzbekistan.

Herat, close to Iran, is under Commander Ismail Khan who was operating from his base in Iran.

Kabul is largely under the control of the Tajiks led by Northern Alliance chief and former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani.

Jalalabad, close to Pakistan, has been taken over by a Peshawar-based Pashtun group of mujahideen commanders, the so-called Eastern Shoora (Consultative Council). It has as the new provincial governor Haji Abdul Qadeer, who had lived in exile in Peshawar while the Taliban were in power during 1996-2001.

He is the brother of Commander Abdul Haq, who was executed by the Taliban in October while trying to foment a rebellion in their ranks.

Kandahar remains the last holdout of the Taliban whose leader, Mullah Omar, is said to be still there.

All this is under the umbrella of the main military allies in the anti-terrorism coalition, the United States and Britain.

Apparently, the Americans have been giving priority more to a military victory over the Taliban and the al-Qaeda network, than the more difficult and arduous task of cobbling a coalition post-Taliban.

Anger assuaged

This is because domestic political pressures on US President George W Bush and his high poll ratings at home have impelled him to get 'results' in the form of a 'military victory', so that he can then report to the American people that their anger over Sept 11 has been fully assuaged.

It is perhaps in this context that US Central Command Commander-in-Chief Gen Tommy Franks, who is overseeing the war in Afghanistan, visited the Bagram air base, 50km from Kabul, on Tuesday and met Northern Alliance leaders probably planning the 'mopping up' phase against the Taliban and the quest for Osama bin Laden.

Regarding Afghanistan's future, the United Nations hosted a meeting of four Afghan factions in Berlin on Nov 26. This meeting was attended by the Northern Alliance, which essentially comprises Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks, representatives of former King Zahir Shah (predominantly Pashtuns, who are the largest single ethnic group there), representatives of the Peshawer-based and Pakistan-backed Afghans and representatives of Iran-backed Afghan exiles.

Their task was to try cobbling a transitional government that provides a semblance of authority to govern Afghanistan in the post-Taliban phase, keeping in view the interests of all ethnic groups and Afghanistan's neighbours who back different factions.

One positive outcome of the Taliban's collapse has been the ability now to dispatch humanitarian supplies to displaced Afghans, which has averted an imminent human disaster, and the reversal of the tide of refugees into Pakistan. The first UN humanitarian flight carrying winter supplies landed in Kabul on Nov 21.

Haunted by the past

Despite some disorder in the early post-Taliban stage, the situation is not as bad as when the Northern Alliance was last in control in 1991 to 1996 when the civil war and shelling on Kabul killed 50,000 Afghan civilians.

Memory of that internecine warfare that virtually destroyed Kabul - and to which the Northern Alliance was party - still rankles with Afghanistan's Pashtun population.

Northern Alliance chief Rabbani, a Tajik who was president of Afghanistan during that turbulent period, returned to Kabul to announce that he was keen more on promoting peace, than pursuing political power.

The United Nations may also organise troops from Muslim countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Jordan to be part of a peacekeeping contingent.

But the situation on the ground is still fluid and more or less under nobody's control, as was demonstrated during Monday's killing of four journalists while travelling from Jalalabad to Kabul.

The hunt for Osama

The mystery of bin Laden's whereabouts is still not resolved, although the Western military campaign and change in the Afghan political status quo shows that the noose around him may be tightening.

The Americans and the Pakistanis, which have dispatched their army to monitor the porous 2,200km long border with Afghanistan, to prevent any possible influx of Taliban fighters or al-Qaeda members, have debunked rumours that bin Laden has fled Afghanistan.

Osama-watchers in Pakistan presume that he would prefer to be killed fighting rather than face the humiliation of capture and trial by the Americans.

The present challenge provides an opportunity as well to re-fashion Afghanistan's future in peace.

Three key differences could prevent an action replay of past instability and violence, particularly the 1990s: high stakes for the United States which is now directly involved, the presence of foreign forces as a possible stabilising factor and the fact that this time the dividends of peace would be measured in large sums of money pumped in for reconstruction and rehabilitation.

Especially, if the international community has no intention of walking away from Afghanistan as it did in the past.