The businesslike conference halls of Bonn are a far cry from the bloodied battlefields of Afghanistan.
But the deal reached yesterday in the former German capital to form an interim government in the devastated country presents it with a gilt-edged opportunity to move from chaos and repression to some sort of order and democratic governance.
The choices are few for Afghanistan: either slip back into the darkness and civil war, or move forward to become part of the modern world by forming a transitional government that encompasses all ethnic groups.
Under the deal thrashed out after a week of hard talks, a 30-member executive council will be established for six months, led by a head of government, five deputies, (to include a woman), and 24 cabinet ministers (another of whom will also be a woman). The council will be based in the Afghan capital, Kabul.
It will govern for six months until a loya jirga, or traditional Afghanistan assembly, meets in the spring to appoint a government which would rule for a further two years until elections are held. A UN peacekeeping force is to be brought in to offer reassurance to those who fear the Northern Alliance which now controls Kabul.
The interim council will be dominated by parties representing Pashtuns, who account for the majority of the Afghan population.
The new government leader is to be a Pashtun, Hamid Karzai, chief of the Populzaiu tribe based near Kandahar, the Taliban's spiritual home. A fluent English speaker, he has lived in the United States and was deputy foreign minister from 1992 to 1994.
Three of the most powerful ministries in the new interim administration will stay with the Northern Alliance: Yunis Qanuni as interior minister, Abdullah Abdullah as foreign minister and Mohammad Fahim as defence minister. All three are Tajiks from the Panjsher Valley, the stronghold of the former Northern Alliance leader, Ahmad Shah Masood, who was assassinated two days before September 11th.
The delegates at the Bonn talks represented four key factions with little in common other than their opposition to the Taliban: the Northern Alliance; supporters of the former king; a group of exiles based in Peshawar; and, finally, a clutch of exile politicians and intellectuals based in Cyprus.
Many voices were excluded from the talks and although it has been battered and its power base dramatically seized, the Taliban is not yet a spent force.
The Hazaras, who represent one in five Afghanis, were not in Bonn. Powerful anti-Taliban warlords, such as Ishmail Khan and Abdul Rashid Dostum, were also not present. and will not easily be corralled into any national government.
There are worrying signs that various Afghan factions are more interested in fighting for power rather than in getting involved in a new broad-based administration.
However, it cannot be denied that even a semi-functional central administration in Kabul can take important steps forward. While the chances of successfully reconstructing Afghanistan may still appear highly remote, the Bonn deal is a good start. But the momentum must now be maintained.
No economic indicators are available for Afghanistan and estimates of the scale of the destruction vary.
The Northern Alliance estimates that at least $2 billion will be required to initially rebuild shattered schools, homes, roads and farms. Other estimates put the bill as high as $25 billion over the next 10 years.
But no foreign donors will offer substantial funds until Afghan leaders prove they are capable of sitting down and governing together.
The big test will be translating what has been agreed in Bonn into something workable for the people of Afghanistan who have endured so much hardship over the years.
Most people are too busy coping with the appalling living conditions to summon up any enthusiasm for the surprisingly positive events around the negotiating table.
If the interim government, backed by substantial amounts of international aid, manages to touch their lives for the better in the months ahead, renewed hope will emerge that this is indeed the real turning point for Afghanistan and not just another false dawn.