Interim regime marks new era in Afghanistan's history

KABUL, Afghanistan -- With a history marred by war, factional feuding and harsh theocratic rule, Afghanistan takes a tentative step this weekend towards national reconciliation and the first peaceful assumption of power in decades.

But even as an advance guard of multinational peacekeepers prepares to deploy, experts warn they face a nation-building mission born of political compromises that may leave them endangered and bogged down.

On Saturday, an honor guard, a reading from the Quran and a rendition of the Afghan national anthem will open a ceremony inaugurating interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai and his Cabinet.

The ceremony of very little pomp will be attended by top U. N. officials, including Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. special envoy who brokered the accord that led to the interim regime, as well as foreign diplomats and expatriate Afghans, until now too afraid to return to their homeland.

The ceremony will be held at the Defense Ministry, a whitewashed building where barely six weeks ago Taliban Defense Minister Obeidullah Akhund met with al-Qaida members. Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida's chief, was Akhund's personal adviser and al-Qaida was the backbone of the Taliban military force, former Taliban say.

The Taliban's refusal to hand over bin Laden, the key suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States, led to U.S. and British airstrikes that decimated the Taliban, led to the collapse of their rule and the takeover of Afghanistan by opposition forces.

Following five years of repressive rule, the Islamic militia's defeat in Kabul on Nov. 13 created an initial euphoria as residents dug out their television sets and cassette recorders, dusted them off and turned them on.

The Taliban-imposed ban on music, television and mixing of the sexes was over. Women were free to return to work and remove their burqas -- the head-to-toe, face-covering garment, required by the Taliban -- but few have dared to expose themselves before the faces of hundreds of northern alliance soldiers now roaming the streets.

The presence of those soldiers has tempered the euphoria.

Ordinary Afghans fear the factions that make up the northern alliance will fight among themselves. As a result, they say international peacekeepers are needed in their war-wrecked capital.

Led by ex-President Burhanuddin Rabbani, the northern alliance partners fought bitterly with one another from 1992-96 when they controlled the capital. Flattening entire neighborhoods of Kabul, they left an estimated 50,000 people dead, most of them civilians.

Peacekeeping force

Britain, which will lead a multinational peacekeeping force, has said it will send a vanguard of around 200 peacekeepers into Kabul by Saturday for the inauguration.

They will stand guard at the Defense Ministry and other key government installations. Most of the soldiers are already in Afghanistan, currently stationed at the Bagram Air Force Base, 36 miles north of the capital.

Britain is expected to provide 1,500 troops, the bulk of which would arrive after Saturday, according to British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon.

French Defense Minister Alain Richard said France would send up to 800 troops -- including around 40 that may be deployed in Kabul for the inauguration -- and Spanish Defense Minister Federico Trillo-Figueroa said his country would provide a battalion of 700 combat troops. Germany and Turkey are also expected to provide significant forces.

The exact composition will be finalized in the coming days, Hoon said Wednesday.

The full international force could number as many as 5,000 and will arrive by the end of December, a U.N. official said on condition of anonymity.

Karzai and his interim administration have been given the task of laying the groundwork for a traditional grand council to be held in six months, when a government will be installed for two years to write a new constitution, establish electoral rolls and pave the way for elections.