Mazar-i-Sharif sits on a flat plain surrounded by distant mountains. It is an ugly, sprawling town, but it is filled with white doves, called kaftar. The doves congregate at the tomb of Hazrat Ali, the fourth caliph of Islam, the cousin and son-in-law of the prophet Mohammed. People here say that any pigeon of a different hue will turn white within forty days of being set free in Mazar-i-Sharif. And indeed, there are no gray or even speckled pigeons here.

Many of the people who move to Mazar are not so easily transformed. As a prelude to becoming governor here, the warlord Mohammed Atta had his men lay siege to the home and offices of a rival, the provincial security chief Gen. Mohammed Akram Khakrizwal, who is almost universally acknowledged to be an honest man committed to the rule of law. Police loyal to Khakrizwal were driven away, and an armed standoff ensued for the next twenty days.

During the siege, Khakrizwal was resupplied with food and water by the small garrison of British troops stationed here, but the foreign soldiers were unable or unwilling to intervene further. Eventually some accommodation was reached and Mohammed Atta was appointed governor of Balkh province.

Now back on the job, the barrel-chested, thickly bearded Pashtun General Khakrizwal--in charge of a largely Tajik and Uzbek area--describes the real and very imperfect nature of his work: "We have security here in Mazar, but in the districts we have only 10 percent control. There are many serious crimes--murder, drug trafficking--but even more important, there are ethnic tensions between Pashtuns, Tajiks and Uzbeks as well as land and water conflicts. We do our best to stop any violence between these groups and between the political parties." The parties he refers to are Abdul Rashid Dostum's Jumbish and Atta's wing of Jamiat, the party once led by the lionized but actually quite vicious Ahmed Shah Massoud.

"Only some of the police are loyal to me," continues the general. "We lack the equipment we need, but I am trying to rebuild my forces." As for the standoff with Atta, the chief is simultaneously blunt and diplomatic. "Atta wants power. Now he is my boss." The general's flat smile says: Welcome to Afghanistan.

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