KANDAHAR: It was cold and dark when Hamid Karzai, the head of Afghanistan’s interim government, stepped off a plane with six close advisers at Bagram air base on Dec 13, 2001, to take the reins of power in a country ruined by 23 years of war.

As Karzai’s younger brother remembered it, they were met by the new defence and interior ministers — two ethnic Tajiks from the Northern Alliance militia who looked stunned and suspicious when they saw Karzai’s small entourage of ethnic Pakhtoon aides.

“They said, ‘Where are all of your bodyguards?”’ Ahmed Wali Karzai recalled in an interview. “My brother said: ‘You are my bodyguards. You are my defence minister and you are my interior minister. If I can’t trust you, how can we keep the country united?’”

Karzai’s low-key arrival was not the triumphant event envisioned by some, and therein lies a glimpse of the competing visions for Afghanistan’s future that, if left unresolved, could doom this country to repeat the mistakes of its past.

Karzai’s task is to unite and stabilize a ravaged country. But while his interim administration is viewed from abroad as a vastly preferable alternative to the Taliban that view is not shared by all Afghans. Regional warlords, ruthless drug barons and ethnic power brokers are reluctant to submit to a central government that has no money, no army or police and no real way to exert authority or win loyalty outside the capital.

“Right now we have no money and no army — that’s the main problem,” Ahmed Wali Karzai said. “Once we have a military controlled by the central government, then there will be no foreign interference and no warlords, and the government can control the whole country.”

The first 600 members of a new national guard finished their training last week, but experts say Afghanistan is probably at least a year away from being able to field a professional, ethnically mixed and well-trained national police force or military under civilian control.

In the meantime, the United States is the glue holding Afghanistan together, according to many Afghan leaders and foreign observers. If US forces were to withdraw, they say, many areas would likely erupt in fighting.

“There’s no chain of command, no authority to issue an order,” said Izzat Wasifi, son of an influential tribal leader in Kandahar. “No one is ruling Afghanistan except the Americans right now. If not for them, we’d be in the hands of the Taliban or in civil war.”

Though Karzai is an ethnic Pakhtoon and a southerner, many in the south say he has been too conciliatory toward other groups in Afghanistan — particularly the Northern Alliance.

Ustad Abdul Alim, an influential Pakhtoon tribal leader from Kandahar province, said he offered to assemble 30,000 Pakhtoon soldiers to accompany Karzai to the capital in December.

“He refused, and that was a mistake,” Alim said. “If he’d taken 30,000 troops to Kabul, he’d have power, (Pakhtoon) cabinet secretaries — he’d have everything he wants.”

Analysts said the key to achieving stability is disarming and demobilizing ethnic and regional militia groups around the country and integrating their followers into civil society with decent jobs.

But many are unlikely to lay down their weapons before the loya jirga, a meeting of leaders from across the country, scheduled for June, at which the next government of Afghanistan will be chosen. The warlords believe they would sacrifice all bargaining power and influence if they disarmed their followers before the meeting, political analysts said, while ordinary Afghans are unsure that the results of the meeting will be peaceful.—Dawn/The Washington Post News Service.