Taliban Flee Afghan Capital

Nov. 13 -- The Northern Alliance took control of the Afghan capital of Kabul today amid scenes of jubilation as the Taliban fled south in the pre-dawn hours.

Northern Alliance soldiers met with little resistance as they entered Kabul, although reporters entering the city with alliance troops said there were incidents of looting and some Pakistani and Arab soldiers fighting for the Taliban were summarily shot.

But civilians were unharmed and the capture was relatively peaceful, reporters said.

Although President Bush had in the past urged the alliance not to take the capital until a plan for a coalition government to rule the fractious country was completed, he hailed the recent events as "great progress."

At a joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, he urged the rebels to acknowledge that a future government must represent "all of Afghanistan," and to "respect the human rights of the people they are liberating."

Meanwhile. military leaders also warned against premature declarations of victory. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters at a press briefing at the Pentagon, "this effort against terrorism and terrorists is far from over."

Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff said: "The al Qaeda terrorist organization remains dangerous and our overall campaign objective remains to destroy al Qaeda and break the Taliban's hold on Afghanistan."

Amid almost euphoric scenes of Kabulis blasting radios, shaving beards and noisily ringing bicycle bells down the streets of the capital, the alliance established what it said was a police force of 6,000, which reporters on the scene described as uniformed men patrolling the city with machine guns mounted on pickup trucks.

In an attempt to allay international concerns that the capital was taken before a political solution for the future of Afghanistan had been reached, Northern Alliance Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said the alliance was not an occupying force.

Speaking to reporters in Kabul, where Northern Alliance troops now occupy government buildings, Abdullah invited U.N. representatives into Kabul along with other Afghan groups — "Taliban excluded" — for discussions on the country's future administration.

A Power Vacuum

But while the mood in Kabul has been victorious, the international community, caught off guard by the speed of the Taliban's unraveling, has been moving to fill the potentially dangerous power vacuum in the war-ravaged country.

U.N. officials are expected to meet with representatives of Afghan groups in the coming days and diplomats from the United States, Russia and Afghanistan's six neighbors have been rushing to patch together a multi-ethnic power-sharing government in Kabul.

Author Sebastian Junger, on a special assignment for ABCNEWS inside Afghanistan, reported that a delegation of elders from Kabul, fearing a complete lack of security in the capital, met with Northern Alliance leaders outside the city late Monday and asked the alliance to enter Kabul and establish a security force in the capital.