A new day in Kabul: after 24 years of war, Afghanistan's capital is breathing free. Can its fledging recovery last?

The former resistance fighter smiled wearily and gestured to the sparsely furnished living room of his Kabul home. "We have to build everything from scratch" he said. "So much has been destroyed. But things will now be good. Inshallah--God willing."

Like many Kabulis, Agha Gul--an old friend of mine from the 1980s, when I was covering and he was fighting the Soviet occupation--had lost his home several times during the various conflicts that ravaged Afghanistan over the past 24 years. From a bloody coup in 1978, to the Soviet war, to bitter factional ...

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