The brothers Haq will sign a paper to get you from Pakistan into this town about an hour's drive west from the border, but to safely travel around the city itself you need to talk to Hazrat Alli, who hangs around at the airport with several score bearded men, with AK47s, and RPG7s.

To be on the safe side some foreigners have gotten a small, handwritten note from Aziz Alli, who owns the local hotel, and commands another score or so of gunmen. Alli says that note will also let you back into the country, and without it you can't enter. But, of course he doesn't mean to compete with the Haq brothers, because they outrank him, have more guns, and one of them is the governor of the province.

Welcome to life in post-Taliban Afghanistan, déjà vu from the warlords who the often cruelly extremist-- but organized-- Taliban defeated.

It might be expected that in a war zone that hasn't straightened itself out yet from what the United Nations officially calls a situation "too unstable" to send in workers, that some authorities would not yet have settled in. But Afghanistan has a history of warlords- caudillos- that shows every sign of returning.

Indeed the host of the Bonn conference German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told the delegates Tuesday that the world was worried about a return of warlordism, and is concerned that "this is precisely what you are doing."

Clan and tribe authority comes naturally to Afghans. All along the highway from the Torkham border to Jalalabad, both sides of the road are lined with large compounds, called "Hujras" in Pashtun which is the language of the major tribe in the area. In them live three to ten families, all related, or one large extended family of one patron. The clay-covered brick walls two or three meters high keep the outsiders out, and keep peering eyes from the females.

The Hujra responds to the clan, and the clan to the tribe, and the tribe, if so moved responds to "shura" or meeting of related tribes. No one mentions Kabul. And when a clan has a good thing going, they keep it going. Take for instance the visas.

After a period of open border, suddenly this week it became necessary to get a visa signed by the office in Peshawar, Pakistan, of Haji Abdul Qadeer, the governor of Nangahar province around Jalalabad. Qadeer is, despite his name, a Haq brother. The only place to get the visa is in the Haq office. And the Haq office runs a tourist company running buses through the border. They give visas to people who take their buses -- at more than $600 a head, for the three- hour journey, floor space in a Haq compound in Jalalabad, and "security" which is guys with guns.

Take for instance, the hospitals.

Although the Taliban rule for the past six years was often very difficult- doctors at Jalalabad's Sahatama Public Health Hospital told 3 Puntos that physicians who disagreed with the Taliban's appointed cleric who ran Sahatama briefly, were looked in toilets for hours at a time to learn some humility-- the Taliban were at least organized.

Dr. Mahmud Asif, a physician who has worked under several regimes, told 3 Puntos that it is too soon to tell how the new administration, so far largely made up of the same mujihadeen families that ran the country before 1996, was going to work, old memories linger.

Although some Mullah (cleric) administrators were tyrants, he said, at least ultimate authority for policy and relations with donors on which the entire Afghan medical community depends, was in the ministry of health in Kabul, staffed by medical professionals.

"But under the commanders, each commander had authority over every hospital in the areas that he ruled," Asif said. "I remember when some commanders wouldn't let inspectors from any of the donors, including UNICEF and the NGOs who were supporting the hospitals."

Last week inside Jalalabad's Nangahar Province Governor's Palace, 60 Pashtun tribal leaders met in an effort to revive the exiled Eastern Shura, a traditional tribal council, to better represent Pashtuns in a future government in Kabul.

And on guard outside the meeting was 22-year-old Sadar Wali, a Pashtun, with his own AK47 and his own opinions.

The Northern Alliance has no right to rule us at all. We will never accept this. We will never let them rule all of Afghanistan.