Guerrillas Take Kabul in Ecstatic Free-For-All : Afghanistan: The takeover comes with a minimum of bloodshed as rebel factions divide up the capital.

The night sky over Kabul exploded in celebration Saturday with millions of rounds of red, white and green tracer fire and machine-gun bursts after thousands of Muslim guerrillas took control of the capital in less than 24 hours.

The takeover, marking the end of a 14-year guerrilla war against a failed authoritarian regime, came with a minimum of bloodshed and reprisals.

There were sporadic firefights and reports of several dozen casualties as hundreds of commanders from rival moujahedeen factions took the city from demoralized and confused forces of the former regime.

The guerrillas seized the presidential palace, key telecommunications centers and garrison after garrison in an apparent free-for-all that carved up the capital into a dangerous checkerboard of control among competing political leaders.

Saturday’s events appeared to be moves to checkmate rival groups, with the fighters taking control of real estate and leaving the new political order to be settled later.

Rebel commander Ahmed Shah Masoud, whose Jamaat-i-Islami fighters quickly secured Kabul’s most strategic facilities, told reporters that he moved only after learning that rival fundamentalist rebel leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar planned to take the city for himself Saturday.

A power failure just before midnight left much of Kabul in darkness. Celebratory artillery and machine-gun fire suddenly seemed ominous, and a curfew was imposed after guerrillas commandeered dozens of taxis and buses at gunpoint.

Despite the disorder and divided loyalties, the rebels met little or no resistance.

The last vestiges of Kabul’s crumbling regime simply collapsed under the weight of the rebel force, ceding buildings, tanks and machine guns just hours before the anniversary of the Marxist coup that had put it on the road to power 14 years and more than a million lives ago.

Thousands of soldiers surrendered, stripping off their uniforms and carrying them home with their few possessions in battered tin boxes.

Colonels and captains tore off their insignia of rank and quickly started taking orders from the same bearded commanders in U.S. Army camouflage fatigues they had battled so hard and so long.

The regime’s once-powerful politicians drove around frantically in official limousines, reduced to little more than traffic cops appealing to soldiers not to fire and pleading with the rebel forces not to provoke them.

“This is a transitional moment--not a transitional period,” Foreign Minister Abdul Wakil said as his black Mercedes whisked him out of the presidential palace at the precise moment that a truck overflowing with moujahedeen rebels was driving in to take possession of Kabul’s symbolic power center.

The potential for a new phase of the civil war remained, however, with moderate and fundamentalist rebel factions taking up positions just across the street from each other throughout the city.

But this did not dim the rebels’ moment of victory.

Shouting “Victory is ours,” one moujahedeen regiment loyal to Masoud showered Kabul’s main street with red tulips and purple wildflowers as they took possession of the state-run Bank of Afghanistan.

Another group loyal to Hekmatyar hugged and kissed the soldiers they were replacing at one of several gates to the presidential palace.

And soldiers brought out plates of rice and kebabs to another group of Hekmatyar supporters that had taken over the Interior Ministry complex with the help of pro-Hekmatyar elements and guerrilla commanders who joined forces after infiltrating the regime’s last stronghold during the past days, weeks and even years.

It was clear from the day’s events that commanders who had borne the brunt of a bitter war that pitted brother against brother and transformed the Afghan countryside into a landscape of destruction had finally grown impatient with their fractious, exiled political leadership based in neighboring Pakistan.

The move on the capital, which began in earnest several days ago as moujahedeen commanders from competing factions separately slipped through dissolving regime defense lines into virtually every neighborhood, came just hours after the politicians in exile had announced an interim rebel council that was acceptable to all major moujahedeen leaders except Hekmatyar, a charismatic intransigent who had vowed to take the capital by force today if the regime did not yield it first.

It remained unclear today whether the majority of rebel commanders who took Kabul support that council; the commanders’ fractionalized control of the city gives them the power to decide its fate.

“The big question now is, what’s the next step?” said an Asian diplomat in Kabul. “Now they have the real estate. But they need to register it. They need the deed of ownership.”

Most of the victorious moujahedeen commanders interviewed as they claimed their strategic new positions throughout the city said they would support any coalition that brings peace and strict Islamic law to Kabul. But the guerrilla commanders loyal to Hekmatyar flatly rejected the compromise formula announced Friday in the Pakistani border town of Peshawar.

There were signs that Hekmatyar triggered Saturday’s takeover in an effort to secure enough strategic real estate to ensure him a key position of power in a future Islamic government.

Commanders loyal to Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami faction, which took control of the Interior Ministry, parts of the presidential palace, several national guard armories and a handful of police stations, said Saturday they were acting on direct orders from Hekmatyar. The fundamentalist leader left Peshawar for his stronghold in the strategic Logar Valley south of Kabul soon after a coalition of regime and rebel forces overthrew President Najibullah 10 days ago.

Those commanders added, however, that they knew of no connection between their operation and the sudden moves by Masoud’s men to seize and reinforce the city’s international airport, the national TV and radio stations, the telecommunications building, the main Kabul garrison, the heart of the presidential palace and the army’s central armory, where in many cases they took up positions in concert with a powerful ethnic tribal militia and defecting regime troops.

At most of those installations, Masoud’s forces appeared relaxed after the takeover. At others, they seemed on battle alert, preparing to defend them against future attacks by Hekmatyar’s forces.

“We’re not talking to the other parties’ commanders,” one Hekmatyar loyalist commander, Turan Sar Shahr, said as his men gleefully distributed 500 assault rifles from the small national guard armory he had just captured in the heart of the city.

“But we are brothers,” he said. “We will not fight each other. Now, we want only peace.”

Asked whether he supports the new 50-member compromise council formed in Peshawar late Friday night, Shahr said: “No. We didn’t have time to wait for these political leaders. We wanted to come quickly here to Kabul.”

Similarly, several of Masoud’s commanders interviewed at their newly won facilities said they did not expect an immediate or large-scale confrontation with Hekmatyar’s forces.

“The moujahedeen of Hekmatyar are not different from us,” said one of them, Commander Mohammed Tahir.

“We’ve all been fighting for the same thing: for Islam, for freedom and for an Islamic government in Kabul. Now we have won our prize.”

But in a sprawling coalition-held garrison bristling with tanks and antiaircraft weapons in the city’s Bala Hesar district, Masoud’s forces nearly opened fire to prevent looting by ethnic Uzbek militiamen loyal to Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostam, who turned on Najibullah and joined in a coalition to drive out the regime. And moujahedeen fighters at the military base appeared tense and preparing for battle.

“The situation is not good,” Kamaluddin, an 18-year-old rebel commander who joined the war at the age of 10, told reporters. “You should leave. It is dangerous. The Hezbi group will confront us.”

Supporting the theory that Hekmatyar’s men moved into Kabul first and provoked Masoud to follow suit was the account given by one of the dozens of Hezb-i-Islami commanders who quietly entered the city during the past few days.

Commander Mohammed Abdul Gaffar said he had been ordered to enter Kabul last Wednesday night to link up with underground Hekmatyar supporters and open negotiations for surrender or coalitions with government commanders at various key installations.

But Gaffar indicated that the Hezb-i-Islami commanders themselves had met and agreed that they should join hands with Masoud’s forces in capturing the city.

“We commanders have decided that we want Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to form a coalition with Masoud and all other groups,” Gaffar said in whispers. “If he does not agree, we will go ahead and start it without him.”

Hekmatyar, who reportedly was 30 miles to the south of the capital, did not comment publicly on Saturday’s takeover.

But Masoud, who has massed a coalition force of former government officers and a powerful mercenary militia, told a group of visiting journalists at his stronghold 35 miles north of the city Saturday that Hekmatyar’s infiltration was part of a broad-based coup attempt to seize the city.