HOPE ROLLS IN: Residents of Kabul, some exuberant, some cautious, watch Northern Alliance tanks rumble down the streets of the capital

With an abandon he said he had not felt in years, 17-year-old Ahmad Zaki chased down a soccer ball on the dusty Wazeer field in central Kabul on Thursday, November 15. His teammates and opponents yelped in delight as they ran after him, laughing at the tightness of his athletic shorts. He hadn't worn them since he was 13.

Their skills rusty but their enthusiasm at a peak Zaki and his friends took advantage of the third day of the Taliban's absence in the Afghan capital to break at least two rules laid down by the hardline regime after it captured Kabul in 1996: playing sports and wearing short pants. "I've been waiting for this moment since I was young," Zaki said, out of breath during a pause in the game. "Now I hope I can play every day."

Cover Story OTHER COVER STORIES The Northern Blitzkieg Time to Go For the Kill War Update: The Alliance Sweep

Small scenes like this played out across the capital in the immediate aftermath of Northern Alliance troops taking control of the streets on November 13. They were the first signs of the tentative rebirth of a city. A boxing club-closed in 1997 by the Taliban, who wanted to turn it into a sandal factory-was refitted with its former punching bags and readied to reopen.

In the Jamhuriat marketplace, cassette vendors blared previously forbidden Indian and Persian pop music from tiny loudspeakers, and openly hawked cassettes featuring pictures of unveiled beauties to crowds of young men and boys. Even a few western titles, such as a recording by Jennifer Lopez and the soundtrack of Legends of the Fall, could be found among the formerly dreary music selection. A few days earlier, customers who hoped to buy such wares had to arrange to meet the vendor at a secret location.

"Under the Taliban, we were allowed to sell only religious music and recorded readings of the holy Koran," said Ahmad Farid, who operates a cassette stall with his brother, Nisar. "Now I think business will improve."

It had been a heady 48 hours. As Northern Alliance troops rolled into Kabul on November 13 morning despite assurances they would remain outside the city, tens of thousands of surprised residents poured into the streets to welcome the new force in control of the capital, with expressions ranging from cautious optimism to uninhibited joy.

	THE COLOUR OF VENGEANCE: Bodies of Taliban soldiers on the road leading to Kabul

After a hasty withdrawal of Taliban officials and military forces on Monday night, an estimated 6,000 Northern Alliance soldiers and police waited just hours before capturing Afghanistan's biggest prize. At 10 a.m., the first truckloads of heavily armed fighters entered the city from the north, fanning out to key staging areas, and drawing cheers, especially from young people who had chafed at the repressive Taliban regime.

"This is unbelievable, like suddenly being let out of prison," said 23-year-old Wafiulah Darwish as he waved at passing trucks overloaded with soldiers. "Last night the Taliban left, today the United Front arrives, and tomorrow I will shave my beard and buy a pair of jeans."

But many older residents of Kabul were more guarded in their enthusiasm, having endured nearly a quarter-century of almost constant clashes between forces tugging for control of the capital. "The mujahideen have been here before and made a mess of things, just like the Taliban and the Russians," said Nabit Marzai, 63. "We will see if this lot can behave better." Despite his doubts, though, Marzai could not help but return the traditional Afghan greeting, his right hand over his heart, to a group of soldiers.

Fears that a Northern Alliance takeover of Kabul could result in widespread looting and violence seemed, for the moment, largely unfounded. But the deployment also failed to prevent scattered incidents of mob violence.

In a neighbourhood near the Kabul airport, more than a hundred Afghan residents dragged a man they identified as Pakistani through the streets, punching him and pelting him with stones to cheers of "Death to Pakistan!" Northern Alliance forces eventually arrived and hustled the man into a bus.

	An Afghan man shakes hands with a teenaged neighbour in the sort of streetside encounter that was banned by the Taliban and would probably give Mullah Omar the shivers

At the home of Taliban Defence Minister Mullah Obaidullah, who apparently fled the city on the night of Monday, November 12, Northern Alliance guards kept Pakistan resident Abdul Ghani locked in a downstairs bathroom, his wrists bound with a headscarf. Claiming to have been brought forcibly to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban, Ghani had been "arrested" on the street by Kabul residents early on Tuesday morning, said guard Mohammad Aziz. "We will keep him here until we have the facilities to put him on trial," said Aziz. "He will not be physically harmed."

Other areas of the city bore more grisly signs of a chaotic shift of power. In a park near the city centre, the bodies of three men identified by onlookers as Taliban sympathisers lay bloodied by multiple gunshot wounds. On the northern outskirts of town, the corpses of four apparent Taliban fighters were strewn by a roadside, their mouths stuffed with Pakistani banknotes by killers angry at the neighbouring country's support for the Taliban.