In the jockeying for power over Afghanistan, some are already talking of a "post-Taleban" country. Whether that also means a "post-Osama bin Laden" one seems uncertain.
But almost everyone appears to hope that, if there is a new government, it should be a multi-ethnic coalition, with a dominant role for the leading Pashtun tribes.
It seems just as likely that no one will entirely agree who should be in that coalition.
And so far only some of Afghanistan can be termed post-Taleban - the large part the Northern Alliance has seized after blistering attacks by American bombers on the former Taleban frontlines.
Only a few weeks ago it sounded deceptively simple, sort of good versus evil, with the real target, bin Laden, hiding somewhere in the impenetrable countryside.
In fact there are a multitude of groups in this multilingual country, some of whom may or may not be on one side or the other.
Who is to say where the real balance lies? Afghanistan has never conducted a modern census and has been torn apart by two decades of war, one reason millions of its citizens are refugees abroad.
Are the Pashtuns really a majority?
No one is really sure. It is often suggested that the Pashtun ethnic group, which dominates the Islamic fundamentalist Taleban, represents 40 per cent of Afghanistan's population of about 25 million (in a country the size of Texas).
"But if you ask them, some will say they are 60 per cent," says exiled Afghan journalist Zahur Afghan. Hardcore Pashtun nationalists will inflate the figure to 70 per cent.
Afghan Pashtuns, a fiercely independent tribal people who speak a language distantly related to Persian, come from the east and south.
The Taleban have always been most comfortable in purely Pashtun areas. They have apparently never, for example, moved their leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, to the multi-ethnic capital of Kabul from his southern stronghold in Kandahar.
In the southern area to which they are retreating, the Taleban are surrounded by Pashtun tribesmen. And it is the Taleban who, until an abrupt change after September 11, were backed by Pakistan, which has more Pashtuns inside its borders than there are in Afghanistan.
Pakistan's military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, who has switched to being an enemy of the Taleban, told Reuters this month that leaders of the Pashtuns are not the Taleban. He wants a new tribal Pashtun leader to emerge.
Who else lives in Afghanistan?
Persian-speaking Tajiks in the north are said to make up about a quarter of the 25 million population. Uzbeks who account for roughly 10 per cent, speak a form of Turkish.
Then there are the Hazaras, Persian-speaking Shi'ites in central Afghanistan, who can claim about 15 per cent. But there are also dozens of other groups and tongues making up the rest of the population.
And while Pakistan supports the Pashtuns, other surrounding countries, each with representatives of its own ethnic groupings also inside Afghanistan, exert leverage in that unfortunate country, promoting their own geopolitical interests.
Iran, for example, supports the minority anti-Taleban Hazara population and their leader, Karim Khalili. Turkey has helped the Uzbeks, and the local Tajiks have received military supplies via Tajikistan.
Who makes up the Northern Alliance?
The Uzbek, Hazara and Tajik minority tribes. The Northern Alliance is an example of the ethnic mixes that have been one of Afghanistan's abiding political problems for 20 years at the very least.
For a number of other Afghans, the Northern Alliance - the main political force opposing the Taleban - represents people they would not accept as rulers.
Tom Heneghan of Reuters in Pakistan has suggested that, with the possible exception of the Tajiks, the other Afghans may not even accept the northerners as equals.
They remember how these northerners, led by Burhanuddin Rabbani and Ahmad Shah Masood, took control of Kabul in 1992 and fought a devastating war against Pashtun-led forces that eventually opened the door for the Taleban to take control in 1996.
The Northern Alliance has been characterised as a collection of tribally based warlords.
A spokeswoman for a group calling itself the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan has described the alliance as a second Taleban, raping 70-year-old women and thousands of girls during its previous rule and killing and torturing thousands of people.
The alliance, even though it controlled only a small northern part of the country before the recent victories, still apparently represented a threat to the Taleban in Kabul.
Two days before the attacks in New York, Masood, its charismatic leader for 20 years, was killed by suicide bombers posing as journalists.
He started the alliance back in 1979 to foster resistance against the invading Soviet Union and was renowned among the Russians as one of the best mujahideen commanders.
Yet the record of the alliance was so bad when it held Kabul from 1992 to 1996 that the people's desire for peace and order is suggested as one of the reasons it lost the capital to the Taleban. Kabul was destroyed by rocket attacks as different alliance commanders fought among themselves.
One of the worst Northern Alliance commanders in Kabul was Abdul Rashid Dostum, now probably giving the Americans a hand.
Where will it end?
Right now, nobody knows. Russian President Vladimir Putin, for example, wants a postwar government containing all the country's ethnic groups and having the support of its neighbours.
But he has ruled out Taleban participation in any administration.
Right now, that sounds like little more than an opening gambit.
- REUTERS, AGENCIES
Story archives:
Links: War against terrorism
Timeline: Major events since the Sept 11 attacks
After the Taleban: the search for peace
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