Led by a reformist Kandahar cleric, Mulana Omar, the Koranic students have opened up roads, allowing supply convoys to reach Kabul’s starved citizens and have brought a hope of peace to the nine of Afghanistan’s 30 provinces under their control.Many rebels have chosen to join their ranks rather than fight the fundamentalist Islamic students.The Taliban’s rapid advance has thrown into disarray a United Nations- brokered peace plan, set to begin on Monday. After the jihad victory against the Communists, the rebel leaders have splintered Afghanistan into warring fiefdoms where banditry and opium-smuggling are rife. The 4,000 armed Muslim students, recruited mainly from Afghan refugee camps along the Pakistan border, consider Mr Rabbani just as “criminal” as the Hizbe Islami warlord.Taliban’s message is popular. The Taliban militia vowed to take the capital, and it is doubtful that the government troops, led by Ahmed Shah Massoud, will give up easily after battling so long.

The Taliban accuse all nine mujahedin rebel factions – which have been feuding among themselves since crushing the pro-Soviet regime in 1992 – of being “criminals” who “betrayed” the Afghans’ trust. Reporters said the rebel commander left without taking his prized carpets, his documents or even a change of clothes. He retreated to Sarobi, where he can cause mischief on the main road between Kabul and the Khyber Pass into Pakistan.Although Kabul’s citizens passed a rare night yesterday without rockets or shells, their relief may be short-lived. Now it has conquered most of southern Afghanistan, driven the most powerful warlord’s forces into retreat, and is advancing on Kabul.The capital’s defenders, who are loyal to President Burhanuddin Rabbani, could not push Hizbe Islami out of Charasyab, despite air raids and offensives.Yet Mr Hekmatyar fled from his headquarters without a fight before the advancing students. Six months ago, the Taliban militia – the name simply means “religious students” – did not exist. Only a few artillery blasts from the Taliban were enough to dislodge Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s forces from the positions they had used to pour shells daily into Kabul, killing thousands of Afghans in the capital.
The victory marks a decisive and unforeseen twist in Afghanistan’s anarchic civil war.

Afghanistan’s main rebel group, Hizbe Islami, yesterday admitted that it had been driven from its stronghold at Charasyab, 18 miles south of Kabul. And when Allah’s words fail to persuade Afghan rebels and bandits to surrender, the student militia, known as the Taliban, relies on its 100 tanks and armoured vehicles to clear the way with fire. The Islamic students are marching through Afghanistan with open Korans. Greenwich, in the end, was where we found a house we liked, where police cars don’t bark orders at you in the street (they do in Manhattan) and where the schools are excellent and free.Bet all our friends in lofts will be wanting to come and visit in the summer when it is hot We are allowed seven guests on the beach every day..