As Taliban cities fall, refugees load donkeys and head home

GHAM GHASHLAGA, Afghanistan -- At a refugee camp in Afghanistan bustling with women loading donkeys for the long-awaited trip home, a crowd of men swelled around a transistor radio and listened to the stunning news of Taliban forces being routed in city after city.

A refugee named Mohibullah glanced at the faces around him, his eyes widening. "All this happened today?" he asked.

"For a month the United Front doesn't capture anything, and now in a week it's capturing all of Afghanistan," Mohibullah said, using the name by which many Afghans know the northern alliance. "This is good news. We're going home."

"Thank you!" children shouted, running after Americans visiting the dusty camp. "Thank you," an old man said, pressing a hand to his heart.

Some 3,000 families had been living in the Gham Ghashlaga refugee camp on pounded dirt near the northeastern town of Khawja Bahuaddin. The camp was in what had been the fraction of Afghanistan under northern alliance control.

By Tuesday, opposition forces could lay claim to much of the country.

Kabul fell, followed by reports of Taliban slipping away from their southern stronghold of Kandahar and the eastern city of Jalalabad.

As fast as Western radio stations broadcast news of the capture of a Taliban-held city or district, refugees at the Gham Ghashlaga camp packed their belongings.

Women folded blankets and stripped off tarpaulins that had served as roofs. The homes they had lived in for months or even years soon became shells of low mud walls, sticks or woven grass.

"There were nine of us here," one woman said, surrounded by some of her seven children. "At night there was no room to sleep, so the adults slept outside in the cold. We are very happy to be going home."

Brother vs. brother

Mohibullah, a father of five in a grimy business jacket over khaki tunic, escaped from the village of Khoja Ghaar about a year ago after the Taliban took it and conscripted the men, he said.

"My brother was a soldier for the United Front, so I was fighting my brother," he said.

Mohibullah sold the donkeys he had fled with to buy wheat, oil and firewood for his family. On Tuesday, like many, he was ready to go, but complaining there were too few trucks to take everyone home.

With U.S. bombardments targeting Taliban positions across Afghanistan over the past weeks, some returning refugees could find their homes devastated by the raids or ruined in the Taliban-opposition fighting. But the grim prospect did not seem to deter them.