These forecasts warned about a Taliban revival and warlords from among the current authorities' sworn enemies consolidating in the southern and eastern provinces. That did not happen -- largely because an overwhelming majority of Afghans support ISAF. Afghan peace, however, remains fragile. Why?

Have NATO leaders and the United Nations office in Afghanistan chosen the wrong strategy?

That is hardly so. I don't think NATO has done less than it could have to bring stability to Afghanistan. Today's developments are inevitable, not so much due to international factors as to domestic ones. Kabul admits this simple truth. President Hamid Karzai agreed that internal influences on national stability were far stronger than outside forces.

That doesn't mean that Afghanistan's neighbors, mainly Pakistan, are easy to deal with. The Afghans never doubt they cannot fully cope without help from Pakistan. Meanwhile, Pakistan creates one problem after another, among them the terrorist bases close to the Afghan border and measures every Afghan deems provocative: to build a wall and lay mines along the Durand Line, which Kabul has not recognized to this day.

Iran has been equally difficult. No Afghan has any doubt that it supplies weapons to the intransigent armed opposition in Nimruz, Farah and partly Helmand. Some even find excuses for Tehran (it is doing so only to prevent the United States from making Afghanistan a bridgehead for a war on Iran). But then, why shift one's own burdens on other shoulders?

However, Kabul today seeks the main reason for Afghan instability within the country.

Nur ul-Haq Ulumi, member of Parliament and one of the leaders of the recently established National Front movement, formerly one of the most prominent Afghan generals and governor of Kandahar, the most problem-laden of Afghan provinces, offers an interesting analysis of current events. He says Afghanistan is in a bad all-around crisis, which involves the economy, domestic policy, army development and numerous other factors. What is most dangerous of all is that the crisis involves confidence. The nation remains split into the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns, technocrats and theocrats.

How, then, to escape from the deadlock? Is it necessary to seek an accord between all parties, including the Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar?

The latter still belongs to the most militant opposition, but many in Kabul think an alliance with him is inevitable. However, the Taliban and the militant opposition in the south and east of Afghanistan are largely one and the same force. Afghans have never treated the Arabs, Uzbeks, Chechens and Pakistanis fighting on the Taliban side as Taliban proper. They remain Arabs, Uzbeks, Chechens and so on for Afghans, including the Taliban. That was why foreign fighters fled to neighboring Pakistan as soon as the Taliban regime fell.

The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan is indicative in this respect. Its unit under the command of Juma Namangani, an ethnic Uzbek and Tajik national in the Soviet years, was prominent among the Taliban fighters. Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Emir of the Taliban, promoted Namangani to front commander. However, IMU fighters -- ethnic Uzbeks from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan -- remained aliens to the Afghan mind, even though Uzbeks make a sizeable ethnic entity in Afghanistan.

The Taliban are treated quite differently. They are Afghan nationals, Pashtun for the most part, who belong to the titular ethnic entity and fight for their own concept of statehood. So it is hardly reasonable to shrug off their opinions.

A Taliban, for instance, is governor of Uruzgan, where a Dutch peacekeeping force is stationed. Some people in Kabul say these peacekeepers guard mainly themselves and the governor. This irony is due to central authorities having no great confidence in the province even when Soviet troops were in Afghanistan.

Nevertheless, no Shurawi, Soviet, soldier ever set foot on the Uruzgan soil. Many think the Dutch force would be better stationed in the neighboring Zabul. This opinion may be technically right; Zabul is on the border with Pakistan, and so is terrorist-infested. But then the Dutch military have come to terms with the Taliban governor and local people alike. What if some Taliban deserve not to be outlawed?

Any balance is unsteady, especially if it is between war and peace. If the Afghan scales slant toward war, it will be surely a civil war -- and not just the fault of the Taliban. It will involve the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns, technocrats and theocrats, and all the rest. Afghanistan has already been through that.

(Pyotr Goncharov is a political commentator for RIA Novosti. This article is reprinted by permission of RIA Novosti. The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.)

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