Kabul

GULBAHAR, Afghanistan - For the people of Kabul, life under bombardment has fallen into a predictable and terrifying routine. At 6 p.m. each day, as the city darkens and the Taliban police begin enforcing a curfew that bars civilians from the street, the estimated 1 million residents return home, gathering with loved ones to wait for American bombs. They wait in darkness. The Taliban have cut electricity in the city to eliminate lights that might guide American pilots. Families who use lanterns and candles - common after 20 years of war - string thick black curtains over their windows, blinding them from what is happening outside.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Strolling from a lecture hall to his office at the Kabul Institute of Medicine, Dr. Gordon Hadley is surrounded by a jostling flock of students in flowing Afghan dress. They ask: Can he delay the makeup exam for the 45 percent of students who failed last summer? When will the electricity be hooked up? When will there be textbooks instead of Hadley's photocopied notes? "They're being told by the administration that everything is up to me," said the 80-year-old former dean of the School of Medicine at Loma Linda University in California.

KABUL, Afghanistan - A flight simulator computer program, a list of flight schools in the United States and documents describing chemical, biological and nuclear warfare and referring to the al-Qaida organization were found yesterday in two houses littered with paper. Some of the documents - in addition to 19 highly advanced French-made Milan antitank missiles discovered Thursday - were in a house that belonged to the Ministry of Defense of the former Taliban government. Other documents were found in a private residence two miles away in the same upscale district of Kabul.

KABUL, Afghanistan - In a filthy room thick with the soot from a wood stove, the money men have just finished counting and sorting a merchant's gift to the government of about 1 billion afghanis. The cash arrived stuffed in the trunk and back seats of two passenger cars. The task has taken 18 men three days. The total street value in Kabul: about $35,000. Interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai has used a note from the merchant to scrawl what amounts to a deposit slip: Allocate the money to the Health Ministry.

KABUL, Afghanistan - As far as gardens go, the one being tended in the center of the city is hurting, only a few flowers growing in one patch, a few others across the way, only dirt and stones between them. Every day, though, Anis Gul takes a small spade in her rough hands and digs around the flowers to loosen the earth so that water can seep to their roots. This is a garden for women only. "I was like a dead body before I began coming here," says Gul, describing the sort of depression that envelops many women in her country.

WASHINGTON - When Marines raised the Stars and Stripes over the damaged U.S. Embassy in Kabul yesterday, they sent a message of American purpose likely to reverberate in capitals throughout the Middle East, Africa and Asia that play host to anti-American extremists. A government that harbored terrorists has been destroyed - much faster than many expected - and replaced with one friendlier to the United States. Its leaders, together with the top tier of the al-Qaida terrorist network, are on the run. And both Afghanistan and new ally Pakistan stand ready to reap economic benefits from their tilt toward the West.

KABUL, Afghanistan - On the night before he was murdered along the lawless road to Kabul, news photographer Aziz Haidari stayed almost as busy helping his colleagues as he did doing his own work. And he did so with the utmost patience and good humor. I know because I needed his help most. I was a mildly nagging presence at his shoulder for hours, waiting to bum a few minutes on his satellite phone. I wanted to send a news story and photo from Jalalabad back to Baltimore. Aziz was trying to send his day's work to his wire service employer, Reuters.

KABUL, Afghanistan - The official line here yesterday from the Northern Alliance was that local Taliban forces were back on the warpath only 20 miles to the southwest. The truth might be a bit more complicated. Some people, particularly among the local ethnic Pashtun majority, say the fighting is merely a case of the Northern Alliance - dominated by ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras - setting out to crush a nearby town of Pashtuns who had decided to run their own affairs. Indisputable is that Northern Alliance forces have been fighting fiercely during the past few days against a force of about 1,000 opponents near the town of Maydan Shar, along the main highway leading southwest from the capital city.

BAGRAM, Afghanistan -- In response to an expanded American bombing campaign that for five days straight has produced repeated strikes by B-52s and fighter jets, the Taliban have sent in hundreds of fresh troops to man critical front-line positions north of Kabul, opposition commanders said yesterday. The reports of Taliban reinforcements came as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited the region yesterday to shore up support for U.S. operations, and as suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden lashed out at Arab leaders, saying in a new video recording that support for the United States amounted to a renunciation of Islam.

WASHINGTON - After a one-day lull yesterday, U.S. airstrikes resumed early today in Afghanistan, as several warplanes streaked over Kabul and powerful explosions were heard in northern areas of the city, rattling buildings in the heart of the capital. The new round of raids came after a slowdown in the U.S.-led airstrikes against the Taliban militia during the Muslim Sabbath yesterday. The resumption of attacks marked a sixth day of strikes against the Taliban regime, which has sheltered Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terrorist network.