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Elsewhere there was gunplay and brutal mob justice. A pair of Arab jihadists barricaded themselves in a tiny kitchen of a house near the airport and fought off armed locals for an hour before crying out the Shahadah ("There is no god but God, and Muhammad is his Prophet") and killing themselves with their own grenades. In Shahr-i-Nao, three Arabs and three Pakistanis, unaware that their comrades had abandoned the city, emerged from an office at dawn and were plunged into a protracted fire fight with residents, who finally prevailed. Several, screaming "Death to Pakistan!" jumped into a dry, concrete water channel where two soldiers lay wounded and began to kick them. Others pulled TIME's correspondent forward to watch as a civilian, his face contorted with hatred, fired short bursts from a Kalashnikov rifle into the still heaving chests of the wounded. Another man used his knife to gouge out the eyes of the third, mortally wounded foreigner.
By 11 a.m., although the Alliance's armor remained behind, the first of 2,000 armed police in distinctive charcoal gray uniforms were taking up positions at key intersections across the city, backed by army units. By evening the number of security forces in and around the city had swelled to 6,000. As the sun set on a Taliban-free Kabul for the first time in five years, a pickup truck, blaring long-banned Afghan music, slowly circled Pashtunistan Square. Men crowded onto its bed, clapping and dancing into the night.