Ahmed Samim watched Kabul airport burning on Wednesday, a huge blaze ignited by US bombs. Later, after visiting his cousin and on his way home from hawking socks and tights at Kabul's main bazaar, the 18-year-old was chased by Taliban militiamen who wanted him to join their war against America.
Instead he is hoping US paratroopers will soon drop out of the sky above his embattled and frightened city along with the bombs and the food parcels.
His friend, Farid Alsoo, got caught by the Taliban on Wednesday. Ahmad Samim got away, sprinting from a couple of Taliban screaming "Stop, stop." Yesterday he escaped Kabul, too, passing a dozen Taliban corpses on his nine-hour flight from the most isolated and beleaguered city in the world.
"During the day the Taliban are on the streets. At night they go to the frontline. They cut the electricity during the bombing and order everybody to put black curtains up in their houses," he said yesterday after arriving with his parents and seven siblings in the town of Shirkat some 96km north of Kabul.
"I saw 12 or 13 bodies of dead Taliban," he recounted, saying that the dead were sprawled at the Sher Pur (Lion's Den) military base to the east of the city center.
Nasar Ahmad arrived from Kabul a bit earlier yesterday after having climbed on to the top of his house for the past few nights for a better view of the bombing. "I saw one house destroyed, but there was no one in it," the 40-year-old said. "Last night was the biggest bombing, but it was all around the city, not in the center."
Reports from Kabul and people passing from the city into territory controlled by the Northern Alliance confirm that thousands of people have fled Kabul into the mountains and the countryside in the past week. Most of those fleeing are Pashtuns heading for the border with Pakistan. Those coming north in only a trickle are ethnic Tajiks.
* Corpses of Taliban troops evident near military bases around the capital.
* The Taliban round up all available men during the day to fight on the front lines.
* Those fleeing Kabul report little sign of civilian casualties.
* Electricity cut at night to make the job of US and British bombers more difficult.
* Residents have been ordered to hang black curtains in their windows.
* Many are glad the Taliban is being bombed, but fear the loss of their homes.
Source: The Guardian
Members of both communities evince mixed feelings about the US bombing, but reserve their greater contempt for the Taliban, who they say are also fleeing Kabul.
As the claims of civilian casualties mount with every day of the bombing campaign, the refugees from Kabul say that in the capital at least there is little sign of heavy civilian casualties.
Marruf, 25, a bricklayer who passed through Kabul and Kandahar, the Taliban headquarters in the south, earlier this week on his way home from Iran, said he knew that a Kabul city center restaurant had been demolished by the Americans, but late at night when it was empty.
"People living near military bases are moving out," said Nasar Ahmad. "They are glad that the Taliban are being destroyed, but they're worried that the bombs might hit their houses."
In Kandahar, Marruf passed a demolished house on the outskirts of the city which locals said belonged to Mullah Omar, the Taliban's reclusive leader.
"They said he was not living there," he said. "People were on the run. There were many people in the fields. They said they had left their houses to escape the bombs. The Taliban are not picking on people any more. They're too busy looking after themselves."
That did not tally with Ahmad Samim's narrow escape from the Taliban, however, and the regime's feared vice and virtue patrols were still prowling the streets of Kabul, witnesses said, at least during daylight and still rounding up young men to take to the frontlines to the north.
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