Washington Post: N. Alliance Sets Up Shop In Capital. "Three days after capturing this capital from the Taliban, the Northern Alliance is increasingly assuming the functions of a new administration, to the alarm of Western powers seeking to promote a broad-based government to end the country's recent history of civil war and factional feuding." This should not come as a suprise to anyone. The Northern Alliance was always operating in accord with its own agenda, which had little to do with ours.