The United Nations in New York yesterday scrambled to give politics and coalition-building a chance to catch up with the unexpectedly rapid military gains made by the Afghan opposition in the face of what is being seen as a Taliban rout rather than strategic retreat.
President Bush, through his spokesman, expressed delight at the advances, insisting that the displacement of the enemy was the purpose of war, but officials expressed concern not to leave the Northern Alliance in control of Kabul for too long.
The UN's special representative, Mr Lakhdar Brahimi, briefed the Security Council on a five-point plan to establish an interim broadly based administration for a two-year period. To put that in place, he has called for a meeting, possibly by the end of the week, involving internal and external opposition representatives, the "Group of 21" countries, front-line states, regional powers like Egypt, as well as the US, Russia, Britain, France and Italy.
Mr Brahimi's preferred option to provide security in Afghanistan is for the establishment of an agreed Afghan force but he acknowledges that it may be necessary initially for a multinational force to play that role. That force is likely to be led by the Turks, with possible help from Bangladesh and Indonesia. It will be UN-mandated but not a UN force.
Mr Brahimi said the goal would be to create a provisional council that reflected the country's ethnic diversity. He suggested it should be chaired "by an individual recognised as a symbol of national unity", an apparent reference to Afghanistan's exiled king, Zaher Shah.
Britain, France, China and the world's largest Muslim country, Indonesia, all expressed concern that the UN should move rapidly, warning of the dangers of a lengthy political vacuum.
"We have always been aware that when you get into these kinds of operations, things can move very fast, and sometimes can get stuck," the UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, said. "We have to be nimble. We have to be able to move quickly, and we have to be flexible."
And Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf said a United Nations force, with Muslim participation, was urgently needed to ensure stability and head off a danger of ethnic clashes.
The urgency of involving international peacekeepers, despite evidence so far of a peaceful occupation of the capital, was emphasised by disparate reports of revenge killings involving Northern Alliance forces elsewhere.
US media outlets have carried several eyewitness accounts of the execution of prisoners by Northern Alliance troops on the road to Kabul. Pentagon officials were concerned at the possibility that the siege of Kunduz, the only city holding out in the north, might end bloodily. There is concern about what is likely to be the fate of foreigners, mainly Arabs and Pakistanis and some Chechens who are fighting for the Taliban.
There were also unconfirmed reports from Western sources in Mazar-i-Sharif of a massacre of up to 600 Taliban fighters.
The opposition advances also open up new military challenges and an entirely new phase of the war.
The seizure of the north may provide new bases and airfields to resupply the Alliance and ease the country's desperate humanitarian needs.
US assessors have also reported back to the Pentagon that one of Tajikistan's military airfields is suitable as a major US base of operations.
That would allow the US to dramatically cut flight times for pilots now based offshore in the Arabian Sea or as far away as Diego Garcia, and would hence allow the intensification of the air campaign.
Access to the majority of the Afghan population also gives the US huge intelligence opportunities, for the first time, to close in on the al Qaeda networks and specifically Osama bin Laden.
But the terrain being fought over now is different in geography and ethnic composition, with many US commentators believing the Northern Alliance will be reluctant to be drawn south, stretching already over-extended lines and supply routes into Pashtun tribal areas.
Yesterday, however, the Northern Alliance Foreign Minister, Dr Abdullah Abdullah, was claiming the Taliban had abandoned the administration of Kunduz, describing it as "just like kabul yesterday". But the road from Kandahar to Kabul, along the southern reaches of the Hindu Kush mountain range, offers huge opportunities for a defensive guerilla war by the Taliban. It is there, in the region's extensive cave networks, that the US expects the final hunt for bin Laden to be concentrated.
To date the only known ally working in the south, apart from small groups of special forces, is the Pashtun oppositionist Mr Hamid Karzai. But US intelligence sources were quoted by the Washington Post as saying that "there is progress being made there. It is not visible as in the north. But they are showing signs of working together." Mr Karzai, speaking yesterday on the phone to CNN, told of visible "disarray" in the ranks of the Taliban, with some of their leaders openly speaking of the damage done by Mullah Mohammed Omar's association with Osama bin Laden.
Mr Karzai also reported widespread defections and said he had urged his supporters not to interfere with defecting Taliban fighters returning to their homes or with negotiations taking place between them and local religious and tribal leaders to transfer security control locally.
Such best-case scenario developments - the effective disintegration of the Taliban - may yet make the capture of Kandahar by the largely Uzbek, Shia Hazara, and Tajik Alliance unnecessary, and relieve the US of the necessity for bringing in substantial ground troops of its own.
But though militarily desirable, such developments only underline the danger that the country may be left politically divided - and highlight the urgency of coalition-building talks.
