Among The Pretenders To Power

Haji Zaman spent years fighting as a mujahedin commander during the anti-Soviet war. But when the Taliban came to power, he scurried into exile in France. Now fortunes are shifting again, and Zaman has come back to the frontier city of Peshawar, Pakistan, to join others looking to grab power after the Taliban falls. Sitting in the shady, walled garden of his villa last week, Zaman said, "We don't need meetings and more meetings. Now we need practical action."

Zaman believes you don't really count in the Afghan political game if you can't field fighting men. He is ready to loan his to help topple the Taliban. But if Zaman's recent experience is any example, significant action is still a distant dream for those who hope to install the broad-based, multiethnic alternative everyone professes to want. It didn't take the death last week of Abdul Haq--America's favorite ex-mujahedin--to convince observers that the political campaign was a mess. Last week the evidence was all too clear in the relative safety of Peshawar.

At a two-day meeting in the city's Moghul-modernist Nishtar Hall, a Conference for Peace and National Unity gathered together groups of every creed and allegiance. Rival proposals hummed from cell phone to cell phone, as exiles canvassed their old cronies inside Afghanistan. The Afghan leaders jockeying for power were talking, talking, talking--but plagued by indecision, misjudgment, self-interest, distrust.

Before the attendees even settled in their seats, host Pir Sayed Ahmed Gailani, a spiritual leader who has positioned himself close to deposed King Zahir Shah, sought backing for his plan to set up an interim supreme council headed by the former monarch. Under Gailani's plan, after the Taliban fell, a council chaired by the King would assume power, backed by a U.N. security force from Muslim countries. The council would call a loya jirga, the traditional representative political gathering, to write a constitution acceptable to all ethnic groups within the framework of Islamic law. Speaker after speaker embraced the proposal and vowed unity. But the airy talk could not paper over the rifts and disagreements that make putting together a new government so hard.

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