(IPS) analysis Going by history, political decisions have always been reactions to events on the ground. And so it is with Afghanistan.

A post-Taliban dispensation was in the making even before the United States-led air strikes began on Oct. 7. But nearly 40 days later, the Northern Alliance-led military moves, leading to the capture of Kabul, has overtaken those political plans.

With an ominous political vacuum in the war-ravaged country, the only clear sign yet of the shape of things to come is the role that the United Nations must and will play in establishing a consensual and working government.

Diplomats say the manner Kabul was taken over - against the US game plan - represents an important opening for the UN, whose representative Lakhdar Brahimi has been negotiating the formation of a new government.

Among the formulas being thrown up as solutions for Afghanistan are the UN-sponsored plans in Cambodia, Kosovo and East Timor.

The Cambodian peace agreement, signed about a decade ago with the UN in charge until elections were held, is being touted as the best model for transition under the present circumstances.

''There is a lot of talk in the corridors about what to do in a post-Taliban Afghanistan, and Cambodia is the first model that comes to everybody's mind,'' Nanvy Soderberg, a former American ambassador to the UN Security Council, said.

Decades of war, communist rule and overbearing external influence are the common denominators for the two countries.

Civil war

But according to Amin Saikal, professor at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University: ''It's possible but wrought with difficulties, particularly going by the events in the last 30 years of Afghan history - deep divisions along ethnic, tribal and linguistic lines.''

Some analysts fear a repeat of the bloodletting and destruction when Kabul was taken over by the same 'mujahideen' (holy warriors) factions that composed the alliance after the collapse of the Soviet-backed communist government in 1992.

They predict another round of prolonged civil war in the shattered country if the Northern Alliance used the Kabul takeover to block a major role for majority ethnic Pashtuns in a post-Taliban administration.

Between 1930s and the 1970s, Afghan ethnic groups - majority Pashtun, Tajiks, Uzbeks and Turkmens were a cohesive force, thanks largely to the presence of Mohammed Zahir Shah, the ex-king who has been in exile in Rome after being overthrown in 1973.

''What is needed is to create a centre of political gravity, in the form of a Supreme Council. A political system will have to evolve around this centre of political gravity, layer by layer, and that can be done under the supervision of the UN,'' said Saikal.

That centre of gravity, as it appears again, is possible if Shah returns. Though most of the factions have vowed allegiance to 84-year-old, the former king himself appears too reluctant to take up the shambles, promising to return as a ''worker'' rather than a ''ruler''.

Northern Alliance leaders have also poured cold water on the suggestion that the former king return from exile, except as a private citizen. But the United Nations believes that he could still play a unifying role in the process of bringing together a broad-based coalition to run Afghanistan and draw up a new constitution.

For now, the UN Security Council has unanimously endorsed an Afghan political plan envisaging a two-year interim government bringing all ethnic groups under one umbrella with a multinational security force to protect them.

The UN has also proposed a five-point plan to establish an inclusive post-Taliban government in Afghanistan, which it said should be backed by an all-Afghan security force rather than a UN or multinational peacekeeping operation.

Under the plan, a traditional Afghan council, the 'loya jirga', comprising ethnic chiefs will be convened. This should lead to a broad-based, multi-ethnic transitional government and eventually to drafting a new constitution.

Peacekeeping force

As those plans are operationalised, another factor that is bound to delay progress will be the composition of a multinational peacekeeping force. (The UN has ruled out a ''blue-helmet'' force).

While Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, is ready to join the peacekeeping mission, Egypt - Washington's biggest ally in the Middle East - has ruled out sending troops to Afghanistan as part of a US-proposed ''Muslim peacekeeping force''. It says it fears the soldiers might return to Egypt as ''terrorists'', alluding to Egyptians who went to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet occupation in the 1980s only to return to Egypt in the 1990s to wage a violent campaign against the government.

Cairo has advised that it is better to look to Muslim countries from East Asia. Diplomats say troops could come from France, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Turkey, Bangladesh and Jordan as well.

The Northern Alliance has said that it has no plans to rule the country and is committed to a peace process under Shah. Younis Qanooni, former deputy defence minister in the UN-recognised government of Burhanuddin Rabbani, said Rabbani would not form a government.

President Mohammed Khatami of neighbouring Iran urged that the UN consult Afghans on the future government. ''The UN should take the initiative to conduct surveys among Afghans over a future government,'' he was quoted as telling Secretary-general Kofi Annan.

Commenting on the enormity of the task for the UN, Soderberg said if one compares the Cambodian operation, which cost about US$1.6 billion over two years, the likely UN role in Afghanistan, would probably require US$45 billion worth of support over a period of time. This would include not only the cost of peace-keeping but rehabilitation and reconstruction as well.

Saikal adds: ''It cannot be that the UN will be going to stay in Afghanistan for one or two years, have a quick election and then get out. That is a difference from Cambodia.''

Carl Thayer, an UN observer during the UN-organised Cambodia elections in 1993, said: ''It's the general principles that apply rather than the specifics. Wherever the international conference on Afghanistan is held, it would bring all the actors - the ex-king, elements of the Taliban, Northern Alliance and ethnic minorities of the south - together. They would agree to some settlement that the international community would ratify.''

Timothy Garden of the Royal Institute for Strategic Studies in London says: ''There has never been an opportunity like this before for the UN to get on and do something right.''