A Little Too Close to the Battle in Kabul By DEXTER FILKINS Adam Ferguson
for The New York Times Afghan security officers took cover while a market
burned and gunfire was exchanged during an attack by militants in Kabul
on Monday.

KABUL, Afghanistan — The man with the bulging shawl had only just
exploded when the real battle got under way.

The scene shifted quickly, like a movie reel sped up: The suicide bomber,
stopped from entering Afghanistan’s Central Bank, burst into pieces
at its footsteps. Six surviving gunmen, who had wanted to follow their
comrade inside, dashed instead into a shopping center and let loose
from the rooftop with rifles and grenades. And hundreds of commandos
with the Afghan government swarmed to the scene and opened fire.

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For the next two hours the battle unfolded with cinematic vividness at
the very heart of Afghanistan’s American-backed government. Waves
of commandos encircled and fired and blasted the gang of guerrillas
inside. The guerrillas fired back with equal ferocity, and with the
knowledge, surely, that they were going to die. Children and old men
and office workers ran stricken in waves.

In the cacophony it was hard to know what to do.

“Should I abandon my post?” an Afghan soldier shouted into his radio.

“Stay!” his commander barked back, guns booming all around. “Stay
at your post and fight!”

The war in Afghanistan does not come often to its capital. By and large
the fight unfolds in the countryside, where the insurgents are, where the
people live. For a capital at war, Kabul on most days is a remarkably
quiet place, with daily life unfolding in its ordinary way. In this
respect, it differs vastly from the capital city of that other American
war, Baghdad, where the guerrillas and terrorists and government soldiers
fought and died every morning for years.

Yet there the insurgents were, not 50 yards from the palace of President
Hamid Karzai, trying to fight their way into one of the country’s most
important institutions. They’d come wrapped in baggy shawls, under
which they’d hidden their guns and grenades and suicide vests. First
dozens, then hundreds of Afghans rolled toward the fight, some in uniform,
some in slacks, some with polished American gear, some with the rusting
antiquated junk left behind from the Soviet epoch.

And they fought. The Afghan soldiers were undisciplined and chaotic, but
no one flinched and everyone fired. They rushed to the battle like kids
to a school yard brawl. After three decades of uninterrupted warfare,
that’s the way it is here.

“I ran out of ammo in there,” an Afghan soldier yelled at his
comrade as he rushed out of the Faroshga market, where the militants
were holed up. “You’re supposed to be my friend and you didn’t
bring me anymore ammo.”

“I’ve got nothing left,” his buddy said.

Then, about an hour into the fighting, another explosion rocked the
streets not a mile away. The ground trembled as if in an earthquake. In
the heat of the fight, many soldiers thought they were being ambushed
from the rear. But when they turned and looked up the street, they saw
another wave of terrified civilians, running not away but to them.

The bullets came close, whizzing past too fast for me to think. I
crouched behind an iron wall, pressing the thing for a cover, and an
Afghan officer looked down at me with a mixture of bewilderment and rage.

“We have come here to die,” the officer said, shaking his head. “But
why on earth are you here?”

After three hours the shooting began to die down. Another wave of
civilians ran out, this one bank tellers and shopkeepers who had been
trapped inside. They had cell phones to their ears; they were calling
home.

“That was my mom,” said Mohammed Ayub, a young bank teller, puffing
and smiling. “She’s happy now.”

And then, finally, it was over, or nearly so. The Faroshga market burned
and belched. The soldiers dragged two slain militants onto the sidewalk
for display.

One of the guerrillas lay under a wet red blanket, the other beneath a
black garbage bag. A soldier lifted the blanket, revealing a lifeless
face cleaved wide open. The skin was pale, the hair black and the eyes
wide open.

“Pakistani,” a man said. But there was no way to know.