The European Union's fledgling effort to develop its own military force is slowly taking shape on the dusty streets of the Afghan capital. But in the mounting insecurity which plagues the country as presidential elections approach next week, it is unlikely that many Afghans have noticed.

So is it a case of great things having humble beginnings, or that nothing has really changed since August, when the five- nation Euro corps, led by France and Germany, replaced Nato in commanding the international United Nations-mandated contingents who patrol Kabul?

Tall, heavily-armed white men in flak jackets, tramping past crowded bazaars or rumbling in armoured cars through the heaving traffic of painted lorries and ancient taxis - who spots the difference between the EU and Nato?

By the end of the year the EU will also have replaced Nato in charge of peace keeping in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The same riddle of recognition will apply there, too, even though these two missions are touted as the most significant steps yet taken to put teeth into Europe's security and defence policy. In fact, they are both postwar, peacekeeping operations on a very classic model.

Elsewhere, the EU's military activity has been more innovative, at least in terms of the mission's purpose. The EU went briefly into Macedonia to forestall a civil war at the initiative of the two main ethnic communities' leaders. Last year, with a UN mandate, it protected civilians and put an end to massacres and rape in the eastern Congolese region of Ituri.

There was nothing here about regime change or mopping up after war. The troops were there to protect civilians and prevent disaster, or in the Congolese case, to put a stop to it. The EU has also organized two police missions to help local law- enforcement in the Balkans, and one in Georgia.

The EU recently set up a command centre to plan European military-civil operations. In recognition that police are a key component of postwar nation building and conflict prevention, there is talk of creating a European gendarmerie.

Yet, as the EU builds up a capability for military action, questions remain over the doctrine which its forces will follow. Are they simply pooling units from national armies under a joint EU command? Is it a mini-Nato with a European face, the much- vaunted European "pillar" of Nato, finally standing erect? Is the new force to have a different or just a separate approach from the Americans?

At their Brussels summit last year EU governments agreed on a security strategy which went far beyond the issue of Europe. In contradiction to the appalling idea of Europe authorizing asylum seekers' detention camps in north Africa, which European home affairs ministers are discussing again this week, it recognized that fortress Europe is unworkable and immoral.

"The post cold war environment is one of increasingly open borders in which the internal and external aspects of security are indissolubly linked," the strategy document says.

Implicitly rejecting the Bush concept of military pre-emption, it calls for "preventive engagement", by which it means European action to help countries return to democracy, or build it, before military threats arise.

How this can be done systematically is fleshed out in an important and imaginative new report, A Human Security Doctrine for Europe. Set up by Javier Solana, the European foreign minister, whose job was created under the new European constitution, the report's drafting committee was convened by Professor Mary Kaldor of the London School of Economics.

The report avoids the issue of the EU's relationship with Nato, and whether EU security activities should complement or substitute for Nato. Nor does it get into the self-flattering debate about the United States as Mars and Europe as Venus.

It points out that Europe's posture is just as Martian and outmoded as that of the United States. "Europe has 1.8 million people under arms, but only a fraction can be deployed in crisis zones. Europe needs to be able to deploy more police, human rights monitors, aid specialists, and many other kinds of civilian expertise," it says.

The report's core is a set of principles to guide EU military- civil missions. The first is the primacy of human rights. It is not enough that an intervention be legal.

The methods adopted must be appropriate since protection of civilians is an end in itself. Under the doctrine, for Europe to adopt tactics like the current US air strikes on Iraqi cities would be wrong and counterproductive since excessive use of force inflames a situation.

More radically, the report calls for a bottom-up approach. Decisions about whether and how to intervene must take account of the views of the people affected by violence and insecurity. Once established on the ground, missions have to provide for consultation, dialogue, and partnership with local people.

"International interventions can never be more than enabling. There is a tendency among internationals to assume they know best. Conventional attitudes have too often been to do it for them or to work with weak or criminalized leaders," the report says.

In a similar spirit, the report says that if the EU is going to act as a "norms-promoter" abroad, it has to conform to clear legal standards itself. There should be common rules of engagement for EU troops, and all deployed personnel should be subject to enforceable sexual codes of conduct, as well as the domestic law of the host state.

The scandal of prostitution and child abuse, exacerbated by claims of immunity or blind-eye- turning by mission leaders, has tarnished too many international operations, whether run by the UN or Nato.

The report calls for a "human security response force" of 15,000 people, of whom a third would be police and civilian specialists. Around 5,000 should be ready to deploy within days. There would be a civil-military crisis management centre in Brussels to provide early warning by keeping in touch with NGOs and monitors on the ground.

These proposals offer a genuine alternative, which go a long way towards solving the spot-the-difference riddle. Whether the report is acted on will largely depend on Javier Solana, its sponsor. He is already recruiting staff for what will be one of the commission's largest departments.

Giving direction to this giant bureaucracy will require strong determination and a willingness to change the ethos of the top- down Nato and United Nations interventions of the past.

Far more than the conventional goals of improving airlift capacity or ensuring national weapon-systems are inter-operable, Europe needs brain and sensitivity if it is to be respected as a new global player. -Dawn/The Observer News Service.