ISLAMABAD, Dec 6: Demilitarization and disarmament, conditions for lasting peace, are the main challenges facing the new interim administration in Afghanistan, where the centuries-old fighting tradition has been reinforced by decades of civil war.

The power-sharing accord brokered in Bonn this week calls on the United Nations to authorize a force to keep order in the Kabul region and says it could be expanded to other areas.

The text says the United Nations force should be made up of mainly Muslim soldiers, and that all armed Afghan groups should be removed from the areas where the UN troops are based.

“Such a force could, as appropriate, be progressively expanded to other urban centres and other areas,” the accord says.

According to a diplomat in Islamabad, however, the accord seems to be “weak” on demilitarization, which is only considered for Kabul.

“Disarming warlords of the Alliance who have already carved up the capital and the country is mission impossible,” he said.

The Northern Alliance, a coalition of Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara minorities, “does not want to relinquish an ounce of power, least of all its weapons,” the diplomat added.

Flouting Western appeals to stay out of the capital, the Alliance seized Kabul on

Nov 13 after an intensive United States bombing campaign helped drive out the Taliban.

The Bonn accord allows the Alliance — whose factions fought among themselves while they were in government from 1992 to 1996 — to retain the key posts of defence, foreign affairs and the interior in the new interim administration, which is to take power on Dec 22.

Showing clear signs of his distaste for foreign troops in Kabul, incoming defence minister Gen Mohammad Qasim Fahim told AFP on Wednesday that he had rebuffed a British offer to deploy soldiers in the capital and insisted he wanted a strictly limited United Nations-mandated force — merely to guard government offices.

In the south, leaders of the dominant Pakhtoon ethnic group are unlikely to want to disarm their fighters.

“To reach the point where the combatants are ready to give up their weapons is a priority but also one of the most difficult tasks of the peace,” said Masoon Stumehzui, director of an Afghan non-governmental organization in Peshawar.

Combat and the bearing of weapons, he added, is a “traditional activity” in Afghanistan.

Despite the harsh nature of the Afghan landscape, the country has been invaded successively over the centuries by the Aryans, Persians, Arabs, Mongols, British and the Soviets, obliging its inhabitants to take up weapons to defend their territory and their lives.

At the same time, the Pakhtoons are renowned for their fighting skills and their strict code of honour which demands vengeance for wrongs.

Other groups — Uzbeks, Turkmen and Tajiks — living in extreme climates in the rugged north are accustomed to keep weapons in hand to defend their villages.

Successive wars — the 1979-89 Soviet occupation and the present civil war which began in 1992 — have created a generation of children which knows nothing but bloodletting.

“At 10 years, boys already know how to handle weapons, at 12, they are carrying them, and at 15 many have already killed,” said Salman Razique, a member of another NGO.—AFP