In the quiet before curfew, another war arrives in Kabul

It was coming up on 9 pm, a clear night in Kabul, and few Afghans were on the streets of their capital. Curfew was beginning in a half hour, and the Taliban militia who run the capital don’t take curfew-breaking lightly.

Then, suddenly: five thunderous blasts. Anti-aircraft fire illuminating the sky. Western missiles flying over Kabul and landing - somewhere. No one knew just where.

But what was happening was evident. The president of the United States, who had said a day earlier that that time was running out if the Taliban didn’t hand over Osama bin Laden, was making his words reality.

Denizens of the Afghan capital - its buildings and its one million people alike grew accustomed to war long ago, so much that when an unidentified airplane streaked across the bright sky in broad daylight Saturday, the reaction was not fear but curiosity.

Sunday night was different. It was for real. Yet there was little sign of panic.

The lights of the city quickly went dark. In a once-exclusive neighbourhood of rose bushes, verandahs and yards hidden by bullet-pocked walls, where many Taliban leaders have homes, bearded soldiers piled into the backs of pick-up trucks.

They roared through the city’s streets in the first minutes after the explosion, beginning a swift and harsh security crackdown. From their trucks, they screamed at drivers to halt, demanding to see identity papers.

From the sounds, most of the hits were taken in the city’s southwestern section a neighbourhood that includes the Darulaman Palace, an old royal residence, and the Balahisar Fort, an Mogul-style installation.

For more than 30 minutes, Taliban anti-aircraft guns thundered their ammunition into the darkness, the only light visible. Overhead, somewhere up high, a pilot from a far-off country carried out orders.

Within minutes, reports began to trickle out of Afghanistan, some from news agencies, some from Taliban sources who spoke without giving their names. They talked of explosions in Afghan cities in Kandahar, in Jalalabad, in Kabul, Herat.

In Pakistan, Taliban ambassador Abdul Salam Zaeef was telling reporters that both the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, and Osama bin Laden, the main suspect in the September 11 attacks on the United States, had survived ‘‘by the grace of God.’’

Most of the citizens of the darkened capital, though, knew none of this. They did, however, know one thing: Again, they were at war.

The city calmed down after an hour or so. The streets were quickly deserted except for the occasional car. In another hour, the curfew in place, electricity returned.

By midnight, lights glowed in homes across Kabul; people were still up. But there was one more event to process: Early Monday, a lone aircraft dropped one bomb in the northern edge of Kabul.

Then the city went dark again. But it didn’t matter all that much; anyone in Kabul who wanted to see what had happened to their city had to wait until about 4:30 am

That was when curfew ended, and when they could go out again to see just what kind of war had arrived.