Strains on Kabul residents run deep

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The television tower lies toppled on its hill, felled by aerial bombing. Not that it matters much to people in Kabul. Their Taliban rulers long ago banned television as part of their rigid Islamic program. \nTanker trucks are spread throughout the city, apparently to disperse the Taliban's oil supplies away from the fuel depots that are on the list of bombing targets. \nThe Foreign Ministry, in the center of Kabul, is untouched by the U.S.-led bombing. Some of its staff have left for Pakistan, while others are taking exams to become diplomats. The successful ones will represent a regime recognized by only one government -- Pakistan. \nMost of the Taliban ministers remain. The Taliban Cabinet continues to meet every week but in an undisclosed location since the bombing began. The presidential palace, once its home, was damaged by fighting years earlier. \nAfter nearly five weeks of bombing, the damage done by the planes seems slight. Only a small portion of the city has been directly hit. The government continues to function. The Taliban supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, who has only rarely visited Kabul, is said to still be in Kandahar, the Taliban's stronghold, 285 miles to the southwest. But his headquarters and home in Kandahar have been bombed and it's not known from where he operates. \nAfter 20 years of Soviet occupation, civil war and now the U.S. and British air campaign, life for ordinary people in Kabul could be described simply as more of the dreadful same, night after night of explosions, shaking buildings, fear and death. \nThe Taliban regime and the Pentagon dispute each other's casualty figures. The U.S. government insists it's trying to avoid harming civilians, but this is a city where military targets are woven into residential neighborhoods. \nAmong the dead since the offensive began Oct. 7 are two families, each of eight people; three children killed when a bomb landed near their home; and four U.N. mine-clearing employees. The Red Cross compound has been hit twice. The children's hospital says it has admitted 29 children. \nOn the streets and in the few restaurants still open, Afghans readily express their sympathy for the thousands killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on America, but are bewildered to find themselves caught up in America's war against Osama bin Laden, the suspected terrorist mastermind, and his al Qaeda network. The United States launched the air assault after the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden. \nAlthough the buildings tremble throughout Kabul when the bombs fall, only a small portion of the city has been directly hit. \nNear the Ariana Chowk neighborhood, which has suffered no damage, is the centuries-old presidential palace where the Taliban used to hold Cabinet meetings. It is badly damaged, not by air raids, however, but by the bitter civil war between Islamic factions that preceded the Taliban's rise to power in 1996. \nLast weekend, B-52 bombers pummeled the mountains that ring Kabul. The earth shook, windows rattled and residents trembled. \nThe rocket-rutted road to Kabul International Airport is lined with rickety wooden shops and mud houses nearby. They shuddered for several nights running as 1,000-pound bombs hit the airport. \nThe Taliban have said the airports in Kabul, Jalalabad, Kandahar and Herat have all been heavily damaged. Kabul's airport is off-limits, and it isn't known whether any of Afghanistan's antiquated fighters survived. \nOutside the mud walls around the tomb of the emperor Barbar, children with dirt-streaked faces push, shove and tumble about in the sand. \nA man on a bicycle, Abdul Jan, bounces down the hill, a passenger teetering on the back. Pausing for a rest, he reminisces about the trees and gardens that made this such a perfect picnic spot. \n"We would bring tents, and small stoves and pots and the very best food," he said. \n"Life used to be sweet." \nThose days seem as far away as the memory of the 16th century Mogul emperor, his burial ground now a rock-strewn overgrown mess, its surrounding trees cut down for firewood. \nThe damage done by the planes seems slight compared with what went before. Along the Kabul River to the south of the city are entire neighborhoods ruined in the 1990s by the civil war between the various Islamic factions that now make up the northern alliance and are fighting the Taliban. \nMacroyan, a Soviet-era complex of dozens of six-story apartment buildings, was heavily damaged. Today it is occupied by the poor. Tattered blankets cover shell holes in the walls. A few windows have panes, but most are covered by sheets and blankets. \nThere are communications towers and artillery positions on the nearby hills, and when night comes, and a curfew and power shutdown plunge the city into silence and darkness, people start listening for the roar of jets. \nIn Macroyan, residents say, some gather on the ground floors when the jets come. Some run away. But most just hunker down in their homes and hope for the best. The worst off are the poorest, who live on hillsides outside the city where the land is free. But the slopes are also where the Taliban guns are positioned. \nIn some cases, the bombing means the displacement of the already displaced. \nYears ago, civil war drove Allah Saeed north to the Khair Khana neighborhood of Kabul. There the impoverished family built a new home on free slope land. But the hilly northern neighborhood is full of targets, the Baba Jan garrison, an artillery unit and an anti-aircraft unit, that have attracted the bombers. \nOne of the families of eight who were killed lived in a mud house in Qali Hotai and the other in Khair Khana, and last week Saeed loaded the family's tattered belongings onto a truck and headed to a safer part of the neighborhood. \n"The bombing was every night and so close. Everything shook. All the children were crying and I was crying," Saeed said. \nHaqer Naser and his family found themselves in the same predicament. They had to abandon their house and move in with a relative. \n"We have nothing except our lives. We had to leave," Naser said, as Kabul got ready for another night of bombing. \n"I just want it to stop," he said. "Our lives are in ruins"