KABUL, July 28: With opposition forces within miles of the Afghan capital, the peace that settled over the city under its 10-month-old occupation by the Taliban Islamic army has shattered.Many of Kabul's one million residents are fleeing once again, clogging the rocket-pocked road to the Pakistan border, with convoys of heavily laden trucks and buses.Those staying behind, dodge the blows of the city's increasingly jittery Taliban defenders and the bombs of the ever-nearer occupation alliance.``When the planes come, everyone lies on the ground. No one knows whether they will be alive,'' said Mohammed Agha, whose wife, infant daughter and five-year-old son lie in hospital, bodies torn by sharpnel.A week ago, as Agha stood behind his steel cart peddling watermelons, a fighter jet screamed in low overhead, dropped its bomb, and roared away. Agha choked in the dust, while his ten-year-old son crouched beside him. Then someone said:``I think it's your house.'' It was.``Every moment is a moment of death,'' Agha said, his grey beard quivering. ``Everyone is feeling scared.''Yesterday, bursting rockets reverberated in the distance. Sporadically, the air crackled with anti-aircraft fire. Taliban fighter jets roared off to the front lines, which are as close as 5 km away, according to the opposition alliance seeking to oust the Taliban.The Taliban now controls Kabul and two-thirds of Afghanistan, imposing a rigid form of Islam that banishes women from the workplace and schools, and forces men into mosques to pray. As night fell on the capital on Saturday, a Taliban soldier grabbed a veiled woman off the streets and dragged her away, beating her with the butt of his rifle all the while. The young man she was talking to fled.Everything from wearing high heels, to talking in public with members of the opposite sex, is a moral transgression, punishable by on-the-spot beatings.The Taliban seized Kabul in September after four years, in which rival factions blasted the city, pounding entire sectors into rubble.Neither the Taliban nor their opponents appear ready for negotiations to stave off a new battle for Kabul, although the city's people pray they will reconsider.``Kabul is just a sorrowful city now,'' said Fazle Ahmed, who owns a tiny cement-floor store where he sells used clothing and household items. ``The people here are not political people. We are just people who want peace,'' he said.The Taliban rulers say they have information that infiltrators are trying to turn residents against them, and are moving to preventing an uprising as the opposition approaches.
