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Before they left, one armed group hit the main money exchange at the Serai-i-Shahzadah near the Kabul River; another, the National Bank on Pashtunistan Square. Private homes were also robbed, although Mohammed Yama Sharifi, a staff member at a hospital run by the Milan-based charity Emergency, noted that "some of [the marauders] said they were Taliban, but in reality they were just local criminals using the Taliban's name to cash in on the chaos."
Battlefield losses were not the only thing fueling their flight. On Monday night, low-flying American helicopter gunships hovered over the darkened city, raining rockets on Taliban targets. "The sky seemed full of them," says Gino Strada, Emergency's director in Kabul. There were several direct hits: one, on a car, killing three Taliban soldiers inside and several civilians in a nearby house; and another on a pickup truck, which burst into flame and flipped, killing eight armed Arab fighters.
Even before the sun rose Tuesday morning, the Alliance had resumed its advance, a triumphal convoy of jeeps, trucks and tanks rumbling toward Kabul. Occasionally the victors discovered an enemy straggler: Western journalists intervened to save the life of a young, beardless suspect whom Alliance soldiers had dragged out of a small hut and were beating furiously. As the advance swept on, he was left on the ground, not seriously wounded but paralyzed with fear, staring into the dawn sky. At 6:30 a.m. troops led by Alliance General Gul Haidar were the first to arrive, halting at the city outskirts in accordance with assurances to the international community. For several hours they held back, the Alliance's Kabul commander Bismillah Khan presiding over an ever growing traffic jam, enforcing the halt with sharp orders and the occasional well-placed punch.
Several Western reporters, including TIME's, made their way into town before the Alliance and encountered scenes of both celebration and violence. In the Taimani district, jubilant crowds, giddy with relief that the fighting had passed them by, cheered foreigners, flew once banned kites and joyrode in their cars. From the back of one, a pretty teenage girl, her burka thrown off, laughed and waved. Said cabdriver Mohammed Zahir: "I never thought I'd see the Taliban leave without a fight."
The overnight evaporation of the Taliban left a yawning power vacuum. In some areas local militias formed to prevent looting, with greater or lesser success. In central Pashtunistan Square, a standoff developed outside the National Bank when one group equipped with automatic rifles and a grenade launcher argued furiously with would-be looters bearing small arms and swords. Weapons were leveled, and bystanders sprinted for cover before the situation defused. Said Mohammed Rafi, 23, a mechanic: "We've had 23 years of war. People are desperately poor, and a lot of guns have been unearthed or taken from Taliban posts. The sooner government troops get here and take control, the better."