They are young, zealous, unlettered, a bit simple-minded, with little capacity for administration But they are not perceived as cruel or venal. The Taliban may be fundamentalist country bumpkins – they certainly viewed Kabul as Sodom and Gomorrah when they took it over – but unlike the mujahedin, whose internecine butchery tore the city apart between 1992 and 1996, they are not rapists or looters. In the face of these wholesale suppressions, it’s not surprising that Kabul is on the dull side. Throw in a 9pm curfew and you have one of the world’s most joyless places.But within the narrow confines which the Taliban permit, life, even cultural life, is slowly returning to Kabul. All visual representations of living things are taboo: no cameras, televisions, cinemas, portraits, nothing My interpreter pointed out a ruined cinema “Did you go often?” I asked “Ten times a week,” he replied wistfully. Not even music has been spared: the Taliban have banned all musical instruments except the tambourine.

Homing pigeons and fighting partridges have been banned, yet are still on sale But kite-flying has gone, chess too. Even the beggar women wear burqas.Men (as all the world knows) must grow their beards long but keep their hair short. Long hair and short beards are seized on, literally, by the religious police, who carry scissors to administer justice on the spot.What war had not already destroyed in the way of pleasure and diversion, the Taliban have done their best to suppress, though not always successfully. (Today’s exchange rate is 40,000 Afghanis to the dollar.)And even after two years, the peace is still tenuous. The crump of heavy artillery was audible in the city last week: the Taliban’s front line with the forces of Ahmad Shah Massoud is only 12 miles up the road.Pax Talibana has been an improvement on war, but it remains a peculiar imposition in what used to be a secular, modern-minded metropolis. For more than 30 years the city’s women went to school or work, very much as they do anywhere else, with their faces exposed Now the few women on the street are shrouded in the burqa. They are not supposed to leave their homes except in the company of a close male relative, and few do.

The evils of wartime are everywhere: child beggars swarm the streets; porters heft huge sacks of banknotes on their backs, paper which due to hyperinflation is worth only $500 or $1,000. Elsewhere the damage looks painstakingly inflicted: a corrugated iron roof peeled back, a missile shoved in, windows and doors gouged out.
Bankrupted and prostrate after four years of bombardment by rival factions of mujahedin, the city has done little yet in the way of rehabilitation. It is a city of spectacular ruins, where vindictive giants appear to have been romping. Whole sections of town to the south-west have been flattened. Afghanistan’s once sophisticated and charming capital has been at peace for more than two years now.

“WELCOME TO CITY, good your journey, forget-me-not,” says the sign on the side of the Kabul city bus. Seven Italians have been arrested and charged in connection with a series of bank robberies – they reportedly committed up to three a day – and drug trafficking.On Friday members of Mr Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party protested in front of the law courts, accusing investigating magistrates of pursuing high-profile corruption probes at the expense of more mundane inquiries into crimes against ordinary citizens. Thousands of people took part in a opposition march across the city yesterday afternoon.However much the fur-draped residents of Brera might like to forget the whole affair, the rest of Milan does not seem inclined to let it drop.. The police forces – all four of them – have tried to show they were effectively combatting street crime. Opposition leaders such as the local media baron, Silvio Berlusconi, and the former fascist Gianfranco Fini have capitalised on the indecision of the centre-left government over illegal immigration and law and order.The government has promised 800 extra police, though it is still unclear when they will arrive or where they will be seconded from. She went to report it, but the nearest carabinieri station was closed for lunch until 4pm.