"Hello, I am Enrico Chavez and I am your new leader." The pimply Hispanic fifteen year old, the new representative of the Nation of Azatlan which had been emplaced as the new government by China, carried an AK-47 and a sack of meal. He was clearly illiterate, undersized from malnutrition and not joking. "I will be instructing you in all your day to day actions from here on out. You will conform to my orders or you will be shot. Now, line up your daughters; I'm going to pick my wives."

I personally would not want a pimply fifteen year old of an ethnic minority choosing my daughter for his "wife" whether she wanted it or not. Especially if it had been shoved down my throat by another country. In fact, you might say I would be "resistant" to that idea. And the majority of the Afghan people are going to actively resist having the Northern Alliance in charge.

The Northern Alliance is composed of three separate ethnic groups, Turkic, Uzbek and Tajik. (There are, by the way, at least fourteen "lingo-ethnic" groups in Afghanistan and hundreds of tribes.) Each of these ethnic groups is represented in Afghanistan but combined they do not equal the numbers, area of control or political power of the majority Pathan ethnicity. They are the remnants of three of the eight or so factions that fell out after the Soviet withdrawal and subsequent civil war. All of them have at one time or another fought each other, more often, in fact, than they fought the Taliban. And they have had their butts soundly kicked out of most of Afghanistan because they were lawless, looting, raping bastards. They also are from three minority groups in Afghanistan, and the Pathans consider anyone from a different tribe, much less another ethnic group, to be an enemy.

The Taliban, as an alternative, were composed of two groups, the majority Pathans and "religious students" (which is what Taliban means) from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations. The Taliban came to power in much the same way that the Nazis did. While the rest of these so-called "allies" were setting up checkpoints and raping any good looking women that came through, the Taliban was reestablishing order, "getting the trains running" and reducing the rate of looting, rape and forced marriages. They also had better discipline and, since they didn't loot as they went, were much better supported by the local populace. In other words, they won the "hearts and minds" of the Afghans. And especially of the Pathans. The battle-lines, to this day, run right on the borders of the primary ethnicity zones; Pathan in the south and Uzbek, Tajik and Turkic in the north.

Once they got into power, of course, they tended to get worse and worse. But the Taliban's atrocities pale in comparison to some of the horrors visited upon the Pathans by the Uzbeks.

Now, though, because we are unwilling (and arguably unable from a readiness and logistics standpoint) to put troops on the ground, we have chosen to support the Northern Alliance, to let them do the fighting and the "liberating" of Afghanistan. Do we think that the leopard has changed its spots? Do we think that some miraculous cure will occur, where the Afghans suddenly find peace and light and beauty? That the Pathans, one of the most notoriously warlike groups on earth, will simply roll over and bare its belly to the NLA because we want it to?

I do not know. All that I know is that the State Department is well aware of this and junior officers in the military are well aware of this. If we try to foist the NLA on the Afghans, we'll end up with an ongoing civil war, one that the NLA, for a variety of reasons, cannot win. I suspect that even the generals and senior policy advisors who dreamed up this Vietnamesque nightmare are aware of it. Why they are doing it is complicated to answer but I do know a couple more things.

We'll be responsible for pimpled fifteen year olds choosing their "brides" from among the Afghans.

And I, personally, would resist that sort of thing. Wouldn't you?