The Ways of a Warlord.(change in Afghanistan)

Like most Afghans toting assault rifles and grenade launchers, the men loitering beneath the walls of the mud-brick fort outside the northern town of Aliabad look like they're spoiling for a fight. But the turbaned warriors do little more than gawk when Gen. Atiqullah Baryalai rolls up. Baryalai, a hyperkinetic 38-year-old and one of Afghanistan's top-ranking military leaders, blows through the crowd while peppering their commander with queries, orders and the occasional joke. His real question: "How many people have you disarmed?" The commander mutters a reply. "Not enough," declares Baryalai. A pause. "OK, you can have that cotton for the men's beds, and I'll increase your cooking-oil ration. But you have to collect the rest of those guns by the end of the week. I'll be back on Saturday."

No wonder the fighters look stunned. Taking guns away from Afghans seems one of the more hopeless and quixotic tasks in the effort to rebuild the ravaged country. Peace remains tenuous. The interim government led by Hamid Karzai--a star on the world stage but a figure of debatable authority at home--is struggling to restore institutions shredded by war. The administration's writ barely runs outside Kabul, which is secured by a British-led peacekeeping force. Last week in Gardez, the capital of southeastern Paktia province, the central government could neither defend the current governor against local opposition, nor ensure a smooth transition for his replacement. Fighting between the two reportedly resulted in nearly 50 deaths.

In fact, Baryalai stands at the same crossroads as the country--between a vision of a certain kind of order and a return to what is known in Dari as qommandonsolari ("warlordism"). He has been appointed by the central government as military leader of four northern provinces-- Baghlan, Takhar, Badakhshan and Konduz. Yet like many commanders around the country, he continues to face pinprick attacks from others trying to carve out turf for themselves. One such mini-warlord recently instigated a rebellion in the town of Qala-e-Zel; Baryalai claims he tried to resolve matters peacefully before sending 1,000 troops, as well as tanks and artillery, to rout the rebels. He blames the notorious Uzbek Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum--to whose territory the remaining insurgents fled--for fomenting the violence. "It's this hobby he has," says Baryalai. "He gives people money, and then he sends them at you, like attack dogs coming at your face."

That kind of factional infighting has the potential to doom Afghanistan's recovery as surely as in the early 1990s, when squabbling among mujahedin leaders led to the rise of the Taliban. Peace in Afghanistan, and attendant hopes for reconstruction, can endure only if the warlords who still hold most of the power in the country are willing to go along with the program. Baryalai says he is. A Tajik from Badakhshan who made his career as a military commander under the famed Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, he has modeled himself after his well-respected mentor. He walks fast to make everyone around him keep up, projects a studied calm, emphasizes proper dress, grooming and physical fitness among his men, and espouses a liberal rhetoric aimed at ethnic inclusiveness. Now Baryalai is betting that the desperate longing for peace among ordinary Afghans ...