Kabul changing overnight

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Women read the evening news on the radio. Kabul's central prison has been emptied. The zoo is running out of money to feed the animals. And the mullah of the main mosque has fled, leaving no one to lead the prayers. \nA dizzying shift in power has turned the Afghan capital inside out. What was taboo a day ago is suddenly acceptable. The enemies of yesterday's regime are the rulers of today. Men wonder if they still have jobs. Women wonder if they'll be able to get them. \nThe collapse of Taliban rule in Kabul is bringing anxiety and jubilation, uncertainty and opportunity. \n"It's a celebration," said Ahmad Maleknur, who smashed through the gates of Kabul's central prison along with thousands of inmates Tuesday. "It's like a wedding party to me." \nThere's apprehension too. \nNilofar Parian, 40, said she would wait a few days before discarding her all-enveloping burqa, one of the many requirements of the Taliban's extraordinarily strict version of Islam. \nIn Taliban times women could not work or go to school. Parian recalled how male religious zealots threw acid at the faces of uncovered women. \n"We're afraid there might still be some Taliban around and the policies of the new government aren't clear yet," she said after inviting a male foreign reporter into her home, itself a gesture that would have been unthinkable a day ago. \nGone are the whip-wielding Taliban religious police herding men into mosques, lashing women for showing their faces and arresting men for trimming their beards. Instead, there are policemen in gray uniforms patrolling the city and troops of the northern alliance traveling in jeeps with photographs of their slain leader, Ahmed Shah Massood. \nThe Taliban abandoned Kabul on Tuesday after four days of stunning military defeats that left the northern alliance, the former opposition, in charge of much of Afghanistan. \nThe prison where men were detained for violating religious mandates freed its inmates two weeks ago. After the Taliban fled, former prisoners ransacked the prison, smashing windows and tearing up floor cushions. \n"They held me here," 18-year-old Saeed Boqer said as he entered a dank cell with a cupid's heart drawn on the wall. He said he was arrested because his beard was too short but "I can shave it now." \nAcross the street, barely surviving in the wreckage from decades of warfare and bombardments, is a zoo. It has five monkeys, a bear with a bloodied nose, two wolves, three jackals, two foxes and a lion whose face was disfigured in a grenade attack. \nThe municipal government stopped providing money for food on Monday, said zookeeper Shir Agha. "We can last two more days," he said. \nFor some, the departure of the Taliban means a whole new life. \nSufi Mohammed Naim Kalakoni said he worked as a spy for the northern alliance while serving in the Taliban's army for the past six years. Now, he said, he commands 50 northern alliance fighters and feels liberated because his double life is over. \nThe Taliban's Radio Shariat, the Arabic word for Islamic law, has been renamed Radio Afghanistan. \nIts new director, Mohammed Alam Ezdediar, said the network has hired three women as news anchors and is broadcasting music, also prohibited under Taliban rule. The radio's first message assured civil servants that they can keep their jobs. \nSome Kabul residents are concerned about the northern alliance's unsavory history; when its leaders were in power five years ago, they ruined much of the capital in factional infighting. \n"I don't know if there will be peace," said Fauzia Jon, a 38-year-old mother of two, whose house was destroyed during the U.S. bombing. "We will see. Time will show if they have good behavior," she said.