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The United States and its allies are winning the war in Afghanistan. But the danger is that a short-sighted vision of what our role should be once the Taliban have been removed from power still could lose the peace.

There have been encouraging words from the Bush administration that it will not “walk away” after the military campaign. But as yet there is little clear thinking about what that means in practice and how we can ensure a broader victory by helping to build a genuinely free, open and prosperous society in Afghanistan.

We have been in similar situations before. And we have made mistakes. I personally have seen how, in the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia, our initial efforts to support the transition to open societies, however well intended, did not work as intended. In many cases, aid created social and political problems rather than solving them.

The reason is to be found in the way that assistance is usually provided. Donors compete to deliver aid in a largely uncoordinated fashion, but they all go through the same recipient government, which can divert the resources for its own purposes. This was the case in Bosnia, where international aid served to feed local fiefdoms and was largely wasted.

In Afghanistan, this problem is writ even larger. It is a broken country. Twenty years of conflict have destroyed nearly all its infrastructure, triggered massive refugee flight and left no national government capable of delivering basic services such as education, health care and security for citizens.

While talks proceed between various Afghan factions on an interim government, we are clearly a long way from a functioning state. And, frankly, the past experience of the country, where competing warlords have favored ethnic rather than national interests, is not encouraging. The fluid political situation, combined with the lack of capacity in Kabul, means that aid delivered in the traditional manner almost certainly will be siphoned off for patronage.

There is only one real alternative: giving charge of the immediate recovery process to the United Nations, which would work closely with an emerging, democratic national government until the government was ready to stand on its own feet. But it is an option that many in Washington instinctively reject, for reasons ranging from deep distrust of the United Nations to skepticism about its ability to deliver.

These concerns are misplaced. Not only does the United Nations alone have the multilateral character needed to oversee such an effort, it is uniquely equipped to take the lead in the early stages of an Afghan recovery.

First, the U.N. development and humanitarian agencies already have extensive on-the- ground presence in Afghanistan, as well as a strong core of several thousand local staff that can ensure assistance is delivered by Afghan nationals. This could be enlarged by recruiting qualified personnel from among Afghans living abroad. Many would almost certainly become the backbone of any new government. They also could ensure a central role for women as both planners and beneficiaries of a broader recovery agenda.

Second, the U.N. Development Program in particular—responding to similar problems from Somalia to Sierra Leone during the past decade—now has made the broad issue of crisis prevention and recovery in weak and failing states one of its core areas of work. That has left it much better equipped in terms of expertise and capacity to provide critical political and technical support and deliver “quick win” high-impact projects from agriculture to schools to clinics that can be directly administered at regional and community level.

Third, the U.N. Development Program already has the necessary experience, political openness, financial controls and transparent budgeting to coordinate aid effectively and minimize the chances of its being either stolen or misused.

Holding the purse-strings so tightly would necessarily require the U.N. agency to play a more intrusive role than aid agencies have in the past. It would be closer to how my foundation network has functioned in the former Soviet empire. By delivering aid at the community level, we would help the political process by removing some of the urgency for an artificial, short- term political solution. This also would avoid the kind of ugly fight for spoils that has corrupted politics in other countries. Warlords could stick to their territories rather than fighting for control of Kabul as they have done in the past.

Acting as paymaster also would require some form of military protection for aid workers. But if such a force were directly linked to the delivery of effective aid services, it could not be seen as an infringement of national sovereignty.

The United Nations would play a clearly defined interim role, with its leadership lasting perhaps a year or two until a newly elected national government was able to take over. The long-range reconstruction programs would remain the responsibility of the World Bank and other development institutions.

Such a plan is not perfect, but it is the best way to avoid the pitfalls of the past. If the U.S. government refuses to follow it now it will have to shoulder the responsibility for failure later.