The glum Pakistanis, supporters of the Taliban until Sept. 11, know they have no friend in the Northern Alliance, and they worry that the alliance will try to grab power for itself despite having pledged to seek a broad, multiethnic coalition.
In fact, the multiethnic Social Democrats, in an alliance with several former opposition parties, are forming governments at the national level and in the Muslim-Croat entity that exclude the three nationalist parties.
She nonetheless financed Antony's military expedition to the restive area east of the Tigris, a multiethnic, multicultural region of shifting alliances, one that had resisted 30 years of Roman efforts at organization.
But Dr. Abdullah said today that the alliance still strongly favored a multiethnic government.
Mr. Anwar has played a key role in holding together an improbably diverse opposition alliance composed of his own multiethnic party, a conservative Islamic party, Pas, and the left-leaning Democratic Action Party, made up mainly of ethnic Chinese.
This was seen as a way of helping Pakistan, a crucial ally in the war against terrorism but a longtime foe of the Northern Alliance, and of persuading Afghanistan's majority Pashtuns to join with the alliance's Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras in a multiethnic government.
But Yunus Qanooni, an alliance leader, reiterated that the alliance favored what he called a broad-based, multiethnic interim government.
Take that "multiethnic vibe".
It's multiethnic and multiracial.
