Feared Afghan Regime Suddenly Feels Afraid

In the village of Taqob, outside Kabul, two teenage girls at a Taliban checkpoint lift the shrouds of every woman who flees the city and every woman who arrives, peering into their faces. They search for insurgents, foreigners, spies.

Of all the signs of panic among the radical Islamic Taliban, this new step to search women is perhaps the most ironic: The regime is now afraid of burkas--the head-to-toe shrouds all Afghan women are compelled to wear on the streets.

For the people of Kabul, the most surprising thing now is that the Taliban is suddenly scared. It is afraid of American bomb strikes, afraid of an attack on Kabul by opposition Northern Alliance forces and afraid of a popular uprising in support of its enemies.

Kabul is a city on the brink, according to accounts from those who fled in recent days, as well as traders who travel between the capital and the north, and local staff at humanitarian aid agencies.

The Taliban has set up checkpoints on the main roads, strengthened its military positions north of the city and deployed antiaircraft guns in the mountains around Kabul.

The dreaded Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, Afghanistan’s religious police, has unleashed a terror campaign in recent weeks, witnesses say, targeting young men seen as possible sources of insurgency or unrest. They are being beaten, locked into cargo containers used as cells or taken away to Policharki prison, the city’s most notorious jail.

Escapees Describe a Medieval World

Those who have escaped describe a medieval world where intellectuals are reviled; where religious police hit women and girls in the streets with large sticks, as if they were stray cattle; and where young men are being ordered to wage a jihad, or religious war, to prove their Muslim credentials.

The Virtue and Vice police are arresting young men for wearing their beards too short and for “Titanic” haircuts--worn long in the front in the style of Leonardo DiCaprio.

People have been arrested over their hair choices since long before the Taliban was singled out for condemnation in the Bush administration’s war on terror, said Shuraj, an 18-year-old ethnic Tajik who goes by one name, but the scale of the present terror campaign is unlike anything he has seen.

“It all started after the Americans said they would bomb,” he said, casting the arrests as a crackdown by the predominantly Pushtun Taliban against other ethnic minorities.

Shuraj, whose name means “brave,” fled Kabul a week ago with about 100 members of his extended family. He said he has been beaten twice in recent weeks by Virtue and Vice police who burst into the school where he teaches English.

“They said, ‘Why are you teaching now? It’s time to pray,’ ” he recalled.

Five years of Taliban rule have stripped the country of educated people, he said. “There is no one left to be English teachers,” said Shuraj, who also works as a pharmacist because he is not allowed to study at university. The reason, he said, is discrimination against ethnic Tajiks.

Those from the Hazara minority, Tajiks, Uzbeks and others face the most systematic persecution by the Taliban, but even fellow Pushtuns feel beleaguered, said Mohammad Anif, 67.

“It’s a lie that the Taliban is good for Pushtun people only. There are about 100 Pushtun families here. The Taliban is against all the people of Afghanistan,” said Anif, who lives in a refugee camp at Anaka village in the Panjshir Valley. He fled to the opposition-controlled area of northern Afghanistan three years ago.

For men of Shuraj’s age, the darkest terror is Kabul’s Policharki prison. “Everyone is afraid of Policharki jail, even a child,” Shuraj said. “When people hear the name, they tremble.”

Anyone who can afford the journey is getting out of Kabul, but the poorest cannot escape. Many women who had professional jobs before the Taliban banned them from working are forced to beg in the bazaars to feed their children, witnesses report.

Situation in Capital Has Deteriorated

“All the people of Kabul city are afraid of punishment by the Taliban,” said Shuraj’s uncle, Abdul Menan, 45. He was a senior policeman forced out of his job five years ago by the Taliban “because I am a Tajik.”

Menan said the situation in Kabul deteriorated sharply a week ago.

“As a policeman I’m analyzing the work of the Taliban. They are barbarians,” he said. “It’s a system of men with guns.”

Menan and other male members of the family told their stories seated on a red cushion in an airy room in a relative’s home in the northern village of Kalai Balla, where red silk curtains wafted in the breeze. Dried mulberries, almonds and green tea were offered to guests.

As they fled Kabul, they hid their money in the clothing of young children and in the soles of their shoes to prevent its theft during body searches at Taliban checkpoints.

“I’m a policeman,” Menan said, chuckling. “I know how to hide money.”

Since the Taliban came to power five years ago, Menan said, he and several members of his family have been jailed. In September 1999, Menan was arrested, held for three days and beaten each night and each morning. His captors shouted, “We are Muslims, you are not! You are a Communist!” he said. Some ethnic Tajiks were supportive of Najibullah, the leader Moscow placed in power in 1986, the peak of the 10-year Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Shuraj’s brother, Akhmad Rashid, was arrested with their father four years ago and held for 24 hours, accused of being a Communist and an opposition fighter. “They said to me, ‘We’re going to kill you in five minutes.’ I heard screams from another cell, and I felt terrified. I couldn’t even think,” Rashid said.

Their father and another uncle, Habibullah Mutaki, were both police officers fired by the Taliban last spring.

Explaining why he was sacked, Mutaki, 48, grasps a pen and holds it out in front of his face--a powerful symbol in a country where higher education has been denied to women and where only 30% of men are literate.

“The Taliban don’t want people who are educated. They don’t want good managers. The country will be destroyed because educated people are being annihilated and there’s no one to lead the country,” he said. “Most educated people have left for foreign countries.”

Said Shuraj, “They want people who don’t think, who are ignorant of human rights. They want people to be quiet and frightened. They want people who are like animals.”

Praying for the Defeat of the Taliban

These days, when the men of Menan’s family go to the mosque, they pray for the defeat of their enemies.

“The mullahs say, ‘You should pray to God that the Taliban, the men who tyrannize Afghanistan, will be defeated,’ ” Shuraj said.

The question is how. Opinion is divided about whether the Northern Alliance can stir up a popular insurgency strong enough to topple Taliban rule.

“People just hope the Northern Alliance can help them, and they’re ready to join with them and attack the Taliban,” Rashid said.

Menan said most people in Kabul are too terrified to fight the Taliban. Even so, he is an optimist. Afghans so deeply crave peace that he is sure the ethnic rivalries and lawlessness that have plagued the country will be swept away after the Taliban falls.

“The people will not make the same mistake they made before. In the past the moujahedeen fought between themselves, but they won’t make that mistake again,” he said.

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Special correspondent Sergei L. Loiko contributed to this report.