Following the assassination of ethnic Tajik Jamiat-I-Islami commander Massoud in September 2001, his intelligence chief, General Mohammed Fahim Khan, is named as the new military leader of the Northern Alliance.

In the west-central Ghor and Herat provinces, Isma'il Khan, a member of Jamiat-I-Islami and former Herat governor, is also an important figure.

The second main grouping is the ethnic Uzbek Junbish-i-Milli-yi Islami, led by General Abdur Rashid Dostum, a former opponent of General Massoud who joined the alliance earlier this year.

The third main element is the ethnic Hazara Shi'a grouping of the Hizb-i Wahdat led by Karim Khalili and Mohaqiq.

In addition, some of the commanders formerly under the leadership of the Pashtun leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar are now fighting with the alliance.

Sayed Hussain Anwari, a member of the Harakat-e Inqelab-e Islami (Islamic Revolutionary Movement) party, serves as the military spokesperson for the United Front.

The alliance controls under 5% of Afghanistan: the Panjshir valley, stronghold and birthplace of the late General Massoud, and a small enclave in the mountainous northeast.

Ousted President Burhanuddin Rabbani remains the official head of the Northern Alliance.

The alliance itself has been accused of spectacular corruption, shelling civilians, carrying out torture and summary executions, and engaging in opium and weapons trafficking, according to human rights groups.

The groups say the alliance has also burned and looted the houses of suspected Taliban sympathizers.

Some of the commanders in the largely Tajik north reportedly use torture routinely to extract information from and break the will of prisoners and political opponents; some of the victims are reportedly tortured to death.

For the past several years, the group has been almost entirely armed and supported by the Russian military and, to a lesser extent, by Iran.

Following US moves to take military action against Osama Bin Laden and his Taliban backers, the alliance's political leaders express confidence that their enemy will be eliminated and state that their 12,000 to 15,000 lightly-armed troops are willing to fight alongside the Americans against the Taliban.

The discredited fundamentalist Pashtun leader Hekmatyar, however, alleges that the Americans are wrong to blame Osama Bin Laden for the attacks in New York and Washington.

He says Americans have no right to attack Afghanistan and warns that his Hizb-e Islami party and other groups will fight against them.

The Northern Alliance follows a milder form of Islam than the Taliban.

In Faizabad, women can work and girls can gain higher education.

During Rabbani's period in office, however, the mujahideen government was not notably respectful of human rights, and proved unable to unite the country when it held power briefly after the expulsion of Soviet forces from the country.

There is talk of restoring the monarchy of King Zaher Shah, ousted in 1973 by the Saour Revolution.

The king and the Northern Alliance are now in the process of appointing 120 persons to form a council, a type of small Loya Jirga.

This council will decide on the composition of a transitional government (to last from six months to a year) to replace the Taliban.

During this transitional period, a full Loya Jirga will be formed to elect a new government.