This week, in a plush 19th-century hotel outside Bonn, a small group of Afghans will take the first steps toward making a state out of their ruined country. We must wish them well.

No human beings deserved the misery that has afflicted the people of Afghanistan since the Soviets crossed the border in 1979 and headed south. No people deserved the murderous civil wars that followed the Soviet defeat. I mean those years when various factions slaughtered each other for power, for loot, for control of the heroin trade, for religion, for language, for fun.

Before the 1996 victory of the Taliban, the country was a theater for Afghan versions of the Bloods and the Crips. With the Taliban now in collapse — and the killing not yet over — one hopes that the pre-Taliban part of the violent Afghan past doesn't return.

As the United Nations-sponsored unity talks begin in the Petersberg hotel, with its dazzling view of the Rhine and Bonn, it should be remembered that there were no Afghans among the hijackers of Sept. 11. There are no Afghans on the list of 22 Al Qaeda terrorists wanted by the United States and its allies.

After 1996, the Afghan people had the terrible misfortune to be ruled by the Taliban, who were not elected by anyone. They had the worse luck to live in a country that opened its doors to the Saudi Arabian killer cultist, Osama Bin Laden, and the foreign-born fanatics of Al Qaeda. When the Taliban gave its welcome to these ruthless true believers, they did not ask the permission of the people of Afghanistan.

Death Is His Game

No surprise there, of course. The Taliban's disturbed leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, claimed to have a direct line to God and started the process that brought down the rolling thunder of the B-52s. Omar is now said to be holed up in Kandahar, wrapped in what he claims is Muhammad's cloak, waiting for death. Death is his game. Death at the World Trade Center. Death in Kandahar. He doesn't care how many others die while he prepares to meet Allah.

The Taliban will not have representatives at the UN conference in Germany. There will be four basic Afghan factions at the table, but the Northern Alliance — aka the United Front — will speak with the authority of military victory. They have been assigned 11 seats at the conference table. Another 11 seats will go to monarchists loyal to the 87-year-old exiled king Zahir Shah. The Peshawar group based in Pakistan, speaking for millions of refugees, and the Cyprus group of respected Afghan exiles will have five seats apiece.

Every delegation is expected to include Pashtuns. With 40% of the population, they are the country's largest ethnic group — the Taliban are almost entirely Pashtun. Other major ethnic groups will have voices at the conference, and the ex-king will include two women in his delegation, while the Northern Alliance will have one.

A Plan for Change

Somehow, in the face of much pessimism and too much memory, the delegates must find their way out of the ruins, if there is to be any hope for the future.

They want to form a 15-person interim government, a coalition to be approved later by Afghan tribal leaders at a Loya Jirga, or grand assembly. The interim government would rule for about two years, while basic governing begins and work is started on writing a constitution. None of this will be easy. All groups will need to set aside the instinct for vengeance, for vendettas both ancient and modern, for sealing the end of the war with mass executions.

The interim government must have some common goals. The first is to create a system of security on roads and borders. Roaming bands of displaced Talibs will surely degenerate into banditry. Al Qaeda foreign fighters will use whatever means necessary to escape capture. The roads will be perilous. And if packages of food, clothing and medical supplies don't arrive soon on those roads, even more Afghans will die, without a shot being fired at them. In Kabul, hungry women are already engaging in mini-riots, trying to get bags of U.S. wheat.

Women the Majority

Those women will be crucial to the pacification of Afghanistan. After two decades of male warfare, women now make up 60% of the population. They must be free to wear the burka or not. They must be free to work, to attend schools and, more important, to share in the process of government. The men know how to kill. But someone has to clean up their mess, to get clean water flowing and housing built and garbage burned and school books into classrooms and food to every family. Women must be part of that process.

None of this can happen if the U.S. and its allies again take a walk. The fear of future Western indifference is the basis of most Afghan cynicism. The Western powers — starting with the U.S. — now have the opportunity to show by deeds, not talk, that they will help Afghanistan become a state again. Not just a country. But a state among other states, chastened by its pitiless wars, its murderous abstractions, its feudalism, its ruinous period of radical Islamic fundamentalism. A state concerned with the things of this Earth. That is, a powerful symbol for all of the Islamic world.

Such a project will take a generation. It will cost billions of dollars in direct aid — grants, not loans — and even more in investment. When the Soviets invaded, there were 220 factories in Afghanistan; in the last weeks of Taliban rule, there were only six left. The remaining poppy fields must be destroyed, along with all existing stockpiles of heroin and opium base. Their existence is too tempting to those with a gift for corruption.

Exiled Afghan agronomists, economists, architects and urban planners must come home to deal with the realities of their ruined country, and know that funds are available to make their visions into reality.

After World War II, the Americans understood that victory must be accompanied by intelligent generosity. Then, as now, the secretary of state was a former soldier. George Marshall knew that the punitive, vengeful terms of the Versailles peace settlement in 1919 had created Adolf Hitler. And so, with the Marshall Plan, we rebuilt Germany and Japan. That was in our national interests, in addition to the interests of Europe and Asia.

Republican Party dogma today opposes nation building. But if Afghanistan is not built into a nation, then the Afghan people are sure to see more horror. And somewhere down the road — no matter what happens to Bin Laden and his cultists — so shall we.