December 6, 2001	Thursday	Ramazan 20, 1422

BONN, Dec 5: Hamid Karzai, the Pakhtoon tribal chief chosen to head the post-Taliban administration in Afghanistan, is unusually qualified to shoulder the huge task of trying to lead his war-torn country back to normal life.

A mix of traditional ties and modern experience meant he won the support of delegates at U.N.-sponsored talks in Bonn even though he was absent, away with his tribesmen preparing for a final assault on Taliban-held Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.

That is also a promising basis for the new government, in which the Northern Alliance coalition of ethnic minorities has pledged to share power with the dominant Pakhtoons to bring peace after 23 years of war, said Afghanistan expert Ahmed Rashid.

“The triumvirate in the north want to talk to similar modernisers in the south,” Rashid said, referring to younger reformers in the Alliance like its delegation head Yunis Qanuni.

Karzai’s traditional credentials could not be better. Tall, balding with a trim salt-and-pepper beard, he is chief of the large Popalzai tribal group around Kandahar.

During the 1980s Soviet war, he helped fund and arm fighters from his tribe, which lives in southern Afghanistan where Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar is believed to be holed up.

Already a tribal elder at the age of 46, he also has a string of very modern skills, including fluent English and an easy good-humoured presence on camera.

Karzai was deputy foreign minister from 1992 to 1994 after the Mujahideen defeated the communists.

MODERN NORTH AND MODERN SOUTH: One of the main hurdles for the anti-Taliban camp was the lack of leaders among the Pakhtoons, the dominant ethnic group which often saw the Taliban as defenders of Pakhtoon interests against the northern minorities.

Karzai stepped in to fill that void on October 8, one day after the US bombing campaign began, when he entered southern Afghanistan to mobilise Pakhtoon tribes against the Taliban. He has since been in regular contact with his supporters and journalists abroad via satellite telephone, including a call broadcast to the opening session of the Bonn conference which he wanted to attend as a royalist delegate.—Reuters