A push too far for Bush

Pity George Bush: For two long months he had nothing to show for his declared "war on terrorism". Now, suddenly, he has too much. Like a piece of glass the Taliban force in Afghanistan has shattered, the opposition Northern Alliance is rampant and in no mood to form a power-sharing government that alone can bring peace to this battered country.

The collapse at Mazar-i-Sharif has been followed by a spectacular rout. Taliban forces have simply crumbled. Their fabled fanaticism has been exposed as a sham. They have turned out to be cowardly bully boys who run away at the first sign of trouble.

This rout is easy to understand. The Taliban's rule, once regarded as a cleansing force for Afghanistan's interminable wars, had long since degenerated into lunacy and tyranny. All decisions had to be made by a single man, Mullah Omar. When Mazar fell and fast action was needed, the command system just seized up.

Now the Alliance has its sights on Kabul. Commanders here say they will never have a better chance to take it. One last kick at the door, they feel, and the whole rotten Taliban structure might collapse. But collapse is not what Mr Bush wants. He needs a negotiated ceasefire, not a revenger's rampage. Above all, he needs this war to end in the imposition of a stable government, not a new chapter in the chaos and bloodletting on which terrorism feeds.

For all their talk of being a united front, the Northern Alliance are a loose coalition of warlords representing only the country's ethnic minorities - principally Hazaris, Shias, Tajiks and Uzbeks. The Taliban are all from the Pashtun majority in the south. Pashtuns will never accept rule by the Northern Alliance, the same warlords whose own feuds destroyed much of Kabul in the mid-Nineties. The danger is that the Alliance will grab Kabul and liberate the north, while Pashtun resistance hardens in the south.

That would leave the US-led coalition back at square one with the terrorists it wants to eradicate protected by a Pashtun shield in Jalalabad and Kandahar. Worse, the neighbouring powers who have done so much to tear this country apart are again flexing their muscles. The exiled king, Zahir Shar, is at 86 too feeble to impose order, and America, the ringmaster, has few cards left to play. It should not start with the Afghans but use its influence to persuade China, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey to adopt a "hands-off" policy.

One bonus is that Moscow is as keen as America in wanting a longterm solution to stop the terrorists coming back.

Another bonus is that in the Alliance the main groupings of the Uzbek and Tajik tribes are loyal to the president Burhanuddin Rabbani. His rule is a long way short of democracy, but his officials support UN supervision, if not peacekeeping, for a future government, and Tony Blair's special representative, Paul Bergne, is in Rabbani's heartland trying to frame a possible power-sharing deal.

For any of this to work the warlords and their foreign backers have to be kept in check. Not just for now, but in the long years ahead.

Otherwise, the capture or otherwise of Osama bin Laden will be academic, as fresh chaos, war and meddling give rise to a whole new generation of terrorist fanatics.