While US bombs fall daily on Taliban positions, political efforts to come up with a viable replacement government for Afghanistan have been taking place in various countries, including Pakistan.
The aim of the talks is to craft a post-Taliban government which, once the fighting ends, would prevent the emergence of a power vacuum or a return to civil war among factions backed by rival outside powers.
The UN's special envoy on Afghanistan, Mr Lakhdar Brahimi, emerged from four days of talks with Pakistanis, Afghans and diplomats in Islamabad yesterday, saying he could give no time frame for finding a political solution on a future government.
"I think we will go as fast as is humanly possible," he said. "The people of Afghanistan have responsibilities; we go just as fast as they can themselves."
No one would deny that the formation of an Afghan government with any chance of stability is an intensely complicated process which could take months, if not years, to complete.
Already negotiations between politicians and officials from more than a dozen countries, as well as representatives of the factions and tribes which make up Afghanistan's ethnic patchwork, have been beset by in-fighting and the competing interests of foreign countries.
The US is backing efforts to reinstate Afghanistan's exiled former king Mohammed Zahir Shah. While some believe he could unite the warring factions, others accuse him of being little more than a US puppet. Iran, which overthrew its own monarch 22 years ago, does not support the Zahir Shah option.
The process is hampered by the fact that no leading figure has emerged who could unify Afghanistan's large Pashtun ethnic group, to which the Taliban belongs.
Pashtuns are also plentiful in parts of neighbouring Pakistan. Some are critical of their government for siding with the US against the Taliban, which it formerly supported.
Others, such as the 1,000 exiled Afghan Pashtuns who congregated in the north-western city of Peshawar last week, are involved in an initiative to form a new government which would exclude any dominant role for the Northern Alliance.
Pakistan has allied itself to the Pashtuns for decades and it nurtured the Taliban in the 1990s during the strife which reigned during the rule of the country by the factions which now make up the Northern Alliance.
The Pakistani political establishment fears the Northern Alliance would split Afghanistan into several feuding parts. The Northern Alliance is backed by India, Pakistan's arch-rival.
Pakistan has shown a willingness to invite "moderate" Taliban into the next government. However, this initiative suffered last week when a former mujahideen commander, Mr Abdul Haq, was executed by the Taliban.
The UN's Mr Brahimi is due to travel to Iran today to continue his consultations with Afghanistan's westerly neighbours. The divisions which have emerged to date will be deeply worrying for the UN and western governments.