PAKISTAN - The Afghan Factor.

As Afghans head to the polls next month for the first direct presidential election in their history, the US wants Musharraf's army to keep up the military pressure on the opponents of the Kabul regime - mainly the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Islamist militants who count on the support of Pakistani opposition parties in their efforts to thwart the Oct. 9 elections. Like these militants, Musharraf's local opponents, consisting mainly of Islamist groups, see in the US-guided democratisation process in Afghanistan a threat to their movement.

The current presidential campaign in Afghanistan is as much a regional as a national contest. In Afghanistan, all politics are ethnic, and political candidates - some being warlords as well - are proxies for neighbours (like Pakistan or Iran) and foreign powers waging historic competitions for influence. The interim president, Hamid Karzai, is Washington's favourite and a member of the Pashtun ethnic group which represents about 40% of Afghans. But with 17 challengers it will be difficult for Karzai to win an outright majority in the first round of voting on Oct. 9 and avoid a run-off. Whatever the result of the election, a new generation of Afghan leaders gives hope for the future, and it will be Afghan voters who determine the next president.

"But if past is prologue", said Stanley Weiss (founder and chairman of Business Executives for National Security, a non-partisan group based in Washington) in IHT of Sept. 1, "it will be Afghanistan's neighbors who will ultimately decide whether this country succeeds as a sovereign nation or remains a failed state". He recalled that the 19th-century Great Game between the British and Russian empires for dominance of the region led outsiders to interfere in the land of the Afghans. "Discussions with political, economic and military officials here suggest that common regional security and economic interests may finally give Afghanistan's neighbors a reason to help make it, not break it, Weiss wrote.

The US Ambassador to Kabul, the Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad, says Washington is determined to "avoid a renewed cycle of destructive geopolitical competition in Afghanistan". In the Declaration on Good Neighbourly Relations signed in 2002, Afghanistan's six neighbours - Pakistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tadjikistan and China - pledged not to interfere in Afghanistan's internal affairs. "Yet", Weiss warned, "given their history of meddling, none have been invited to participate in NATO's International Security Assistance Force" in Afghanistan.

With the possible exception of Islamabad, whose military intelligence service (ISI) values Afghanistan for the "strategic depth" it would provide if Pakistan were attacked by India, none of Afghanistan's neighbours has an interest in its slipping back into the hands of a radical Islamist regime that might again sponsor attacks against their governments.

Likewise, the entire region has a common interest in keeping out the Afghan opium and heroin that flow through Tadjikistan, Iran and Pakistan into Russia and West Europe. Afghanistan is once again the world's leader in opium production. Iran is the world's leader in opium interdiction.

Landlocked Afghanistan will also need friendly neighbours if it is to realise Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani's dream of the country becoming a "hub of regional commerce" instead of conflict. Zalmai Rassoul, Karzai's national security adviser, envisions Afghanistan as the "Dubai of Central Asia", with its central location as "a land bridge for north-south trade" making trade and tourism the future pillars of its economy.

Iran, Tadjikistan and Uzbekistan provide electricity to large parts of Afghanistan. India is helping Iran develop roads and railways to Afghanistan and Central Asia. The Iranian port of Chabahar will be used to move goods to and from Afghanistan. India is considering "peace pipelines" - for gas to be piped from Iran and Turkmenistan across Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian subcontinent, which would bring Kabul and Islamabad hundreds of millions of dollars in transit fees. But Weiss quoted Krishna Rasgotra, the former Indian foreign secretary, as saying "the pipelines will remain a pipe dream unless there is peace between India and Pakistan".