Not that the fighting was finished. As an amorphous group of generals and civilians took over in Kabul, insurgent troops tightened their siege. The various rebel armies were still spoiling for a fight-with the remnants of Najibullah’s regime, or with each other. Outright war seemed possible between two of the strongest guerrilla leaders: Ahmed Shah Massoud, the legendary “Lion of the Panjshir,” and his fiercest rival, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. But the war in Afghanistan, which has killed more than 1 million people so far, is no longer a struggle between superpower puppeteers. The Soviet Union has broken up, its demise hastened partly by the Afghan war and the Islamic unrest that Moscow’s 1979 intervention was supposed to head off. Ronald Reagan’s policy of support for anti-communist guerrillas in places like Nicaragua, Angola and Afghanistan has paid off. Although the suffering continues, Afghanistan’s geopolitical significance is all but gone.

The mujahedin, the fundamentalist rebels, could almost certainly throw out what’s left of the former communist government without firing another bullet, merely by agreeing to hold free national elections under a proposed United Nations peace plan. But now the war is being fought for reasons that are likely to be much harder to eradicate than Marxism: ethnic rivalries and personal grudges. Although Hekmatyar has a reputation for brutality that stirs fear in Kabul, he has one key advantage over Massoud: he belongs to the Pashtun ethnic group that has dominated Kabul for three centuries. Massoud is a member of the northern Tajik minority. Ethnicity could hurt Massoud’s chances of ruling in Kabul, if that is what he is seeking.

Inside the city, troops loyal to a third force in the capital, Abdel Rashid Dostam, swaggered through the streets. A diplomat in Pakistan, where many of the guerrillas are based, describes Dostam as a “classic Genghis Khan type. He’s big and looks mean.” Until recently the illiterate but charismatic tribal leader, a member of the Uzbek minority, was one of Najibullah’s most trusted militia chiefs. But after Najibullah removed some of his friends, Dostam broke with the president. His soldiers captured the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, cutting off Kabul’s supplies of food and fuel from that direction. " They’re disciplined as an army, though they’ll never make a U.N. peacekeeping force," says the diplomat. “They have a record of rape and plunder.” Massoud’s forces, emboldened by Dostam’s example, began pressing toward Kabul, forcing Hekmatyar to mount his own drive on the capital.

It was Dostam’s men who stopped Najibullah from fleeing the country. Another of the president’s former allies, Foreign Minister Abdul Wakil, quickly went before reporters to denounce him as “a hated dictator” and “an obstacle to peace.” The generals welcomed Dostam back to town and - with his apparent approval - made overtures to Massoud. But now that Dostam is his own boss, it’s not clear how long he would be willing to take orders from others.

Aside from Najibullah himself, no one was more upset by the turn of events in Kabul than Benon Sevan. For four years, the United Nations special envoy has been trying to win support for a peaceful settlement to Afghanistan’s 14-year war. Mujahedin leaders say Sevan now wants to exclude them from a 15-member temporary council and seat only exiled intellectuals. “The plan is not acceptable to the Afghan people,” says Massoud’s brother, Yahya. Sevan, who was in Kabul when Najibullah bolted, spent the week frantically trying to coax the new leaders to stick with the peace plan. But most of the warring factions were too busy jockeying for position to pay much attention. And even if they had the means, neither Washington nor Moscow had any interest in further intervention.