Afghanistan, a victim of ``great games,'' is yet again faced with a momentous challenge. It is desperately in search of its lost identity.

Hamid Karzai, the interim leader of Afghanistan, is the man of the hour. To see what leadership traits he will need, it is useful to analyze the reign of King Zahir Shah, who ruled Afghanistan from 1933 to 1973.

According to the Bonn agreement, Zahir Shah will be organizing the Loya Jirga, a kind of national assembly or convention, in July 2002 to decide the future political setup and devise a new constitution.

A new constitution in 1964 was one of the most significant contributions of the former King Zahir Shah. It transformed Afghanistan into a democracy with free elections, a parliament, civil rights, emancipation for women and universal suffrage. On the one hand, the king artfully co-opted the progressive elements in the constitution-making process, while on the other hand he convened the Loya Jirga to consider the draft constitution. The Jirga's proposed amendments were duly incorporated before it gave the final go-ahead.

Foreign aid flowed from both East and West during his reign, but its impact was hardly visible outside Kabul. Though many of the king's reforms were stymied by factionalism, he also was frequently accused of indecisiveness. And he remained oblivious to political developments in the country. A wealthy royalist elite in Kabul was totally cut off from the rural population. By 1971 there was a widespread famine and with relief operations hampered by the incompetence and corruption of the bureaucracy, as many as 100,000 people lost their lives. In the midst of the crisis, the king went to Rome for treatment of a minor eye ailment in 1973, and was deposed by a military coup d'etat.

Hamid Karzai is known to be good at keeping a cool head in extreme circumstances. He describes himself as ``a politician, not a fighter.'' He speaks six languages - Pushto, Darl, English, French, Hindu and Urdu. As an elder of the half-million Popolzai tribe (a subsection of the Pashtuns) in southern Afghanistan, he has leadership experience. Karzai's father was the chief tribal leader until his brutal murder in July 1999 at the hands of Taliban agents in Quetta. Hamid Karzai was soon appointed the new tribal chief. He assembled a 300-vehicle convoy of mourners and, while courageously dealing with both Pakistan and the Taliban, took his father's body from Quetta to be buried in his home city of Kandahar. No one dared intervene.

Karzai built supply lines between anti-Soviet Afghan guerrillas and Pakistan for channeling U.S. resources during the 1980s. When the Mujahedeen took power in 1992, he returned to serve for two years as deputy foreign minister in the government of President Burhanuddin Rabbani, but his disillusionment with the infighting led him to switch over briefly to the Taliban before returning to Pakistan.

Karzai will have to start from scratch. His experience, determination and independent thinking will be an asset. The interim government has been charged with setting up a central bank, a proper judicial system, a civil service and a human-rights commission. This is real institutional building in essence. A lot will depend on his choice of associates who will run the actual show. He may attract Afghan expatriates based in the United States and Europe to apply their expertise and knowledge.

Confronted by Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara power centers in Kabul, Karzai must solidify his leadership of the Pashtuns while ensuring unity of all ethnic groups. The military balance in the capital will tilt in Karzai's favor only after the complete deployment of a U.N. peacekeeping force.

As Karzai showed in Kandahar, negotiating a Taliban surrender, he can be persuasive. Afghanistan, more than anything else, requires a leader adept at conciliation and consensus. The international financial aid will be a major incentive that Karzai can deploy to win support for a broad-based governments by ethnic warlords.

I hope he will benefit a great deal from understanding the successes and failures of Zahir Shah - to venture decisively but cautiously while introducing new institutions, balancing foreign relations with neighboring states and remaining in touch with realities on the ground.

It's a tall order but definitely achievable, provided that the international community, especially the United States, stands by its commitment and moral responsibility to reconstruct Afghanistan.

Hassan Abbas, a police officer from Pakistan, is studying for a master's degree at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He is also an adjunct faculty member of the Pearson Peacekeeping Center of Canada.