Afghanistan's growing power vacuum

Rabbani's arrival in Kabul creates a need for urgency

		By the BBC's Daniel Lak

Setting up some sort of transitional authority in Afghanistan was never going to be easy, but now it looks dangerously overdue.

Reports from the Taleban stronghold of Kandahar that the group is still clinging to power shows that attempts to encourage defections from Taleban ranks are still not enough to topple them.

The Northern Alliance is in control of the capital

With the Northern Alliance in control of the capital and no prospect yet of a United Nations-supported political process getting under way, the Pashtun tribes seem to have no voice in Kabul.

Similarly in Jalalabad, where an uneasy agreement seems to have been reached among the eastern Pashtun forces who took over the city from the Taleban.

Stability would be much more likely if there were some form of broad-based government or even a tribal council of elders, a loya jirga, to discuss the country's future.

UN accusations

President Burhanuddin Rabbani's arrival back in Kabul five years after he fled the advance of the Taleban will add impetus to the need for a political process.

He says he wants to set up a broad-based council to discuss the future as soon as possible, but the United Nations has accused his Northern Alliance forces of not moving quickly enough to implement that promise.

Mr Rabbani has been the widely recognised head of state in Afghanistan since before the Taleban takeover, but that was a de facto arrangement that was part of an earlier, failed United Nations peace process.

Growing danger

UN officials say privately he will certainly have to be part of the transitional authority, and perhaps a longer-term player. But that will have to be the decision of the Afghan people.

The failure so far to establish a unified voice for the Pashtun tribes is endangering what stability there is in the country.

The situation around Kandahar needs to be resolved quickly if factional fighting among anti-Taleban forces is to be avoided.