The sound of artillery and machine-gun fire reverberated in the darkened sky over Kabul, capital of war-torn Afghanistan. When dawn arrived, residents cautiously crept from their homes in search of clues as to what had occurred during the long night and who had control of their city. Outside the presidential palace, they found the answer. Swinging from a concrete post were two bruised corpses--those of Najibullah, President of Afghanistan from 1987 to 1992, and his brother Shahpur Ahmedzi.

It was an appropriately medieval spectacle for a country that years ago degenerated into primitive warring bands, although equipped with frighteningly modern weaponry. Najibullah's swinging body signified that Kabul had fallen to a new set of victors--the Taliban, a two-year-old group of former Islamic seminarians who just two days earlier began their march on the capital. The government, headed by President Burhanuddin Rabbani, fled before they arrived, and that spelled doom for Najibullah, 49. Rabbani had allowed Najibullah to live after he was overthrown in 1992, and the former President had spent the past 4 1/2 years as a captive in a United Nations compound. The Taliban were not part of that commitment, however, and at 1:00 a.m. their soldiers entered the compound and led the brothers away to die. Many cheered at the gory spectacle--Najibullah had been nicknamed the "Butcher of Kabul" for his brutal, Soviet-backed rule, and his brother had served as his security chief--but that was probably in memory of past miseries, not with solid hopes for the future. The Taliban are severe Islamic fundamentalists, but little else is known about them or their leader, a former mujahedin, or holy warrior, in his 30s named Maulana Mohammad Omar. Their military success has been spectacular: the group now controls three-fourths of Afghanistan's territory. But it is uncertain whether they can enforce peace, sustain any kind of unity or even fight off expected counterattacks from Rabbani's forces holed up north of Kabul.

Hours after taking the city, the Taliban announced that Afghanistan would be ruled by an interim six-member council led by Omar's deputy, Mullah Mohammad Rabbani (no relation to the fleeing President). "A complete Islamic system will be enforced," they declared. In cities they already govern, television sets are forbidden, women cannot work outside the home and men are required to grow a beard.

Progressives they're not, but the Taliban see themselves as a solution to Afghanistan's warring-states deadlock, not an extension of it. When the Soviets withdrew after 10 years of occupation, the U.S.-backed mujahedin groups that had opposed the communists fought among themselves for control of the country. Moscow-backed Najibullah was ousted in 1992, but since then the four years of warfare between Rabbani and rival mujahedin leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar did perhaps more damage to the country than the Soviet occupation. Kabul was relatively intact when the Soviets departed in 1989; in the succeeding years, it was virtually destroyed in bombardments and street fighting that took 30,000 lives.

Omar went back to religious studies in 1989. Two years ago, he emerged as leader of the Taliban, which was determined to vanquish the warring factions and transform Afghanistan into a fundamentalist state. The group's phenomenal success in capturing important Afghan provinces forced Rabbani and Hekmatyar into a May alliance, with pressure from Iran. (The Taliban belong to the Sunni sect, and Shi'ite Iran wanted to prevent them from taking power.) In 1994 the Taliban, who are allegedly supported by Pakistan, attempted a takeover of Kabul but failed. They fell back to southern and western strongholds and rearmed themselves. Two weeks ago, they captured Jalalabad, an eastern city through which food and other essentials are shipped from Pakistan to Kabul. Army Chief Ahmad Shah Massoud immediately started moving men and arms to a base 50 km north of Kabul. When the Taliban started their final assault, Afghan air force jets bombed their columns, but the government was, in fact, ready to surrender. The night the insurgents arrived, most of Rabbani and Hekmatyar's forces had already fled, and the city was taken with no resistance. The conquerors made a statement on Kabul radio: "Afghanistan is the common house of all Afghans. No group can govern Afghanistan anymore."

Whether the Taliban will ultimately prevail depends on how much fight is left in the government forces, holed up a mere 50 km away. One possibility is that Rabbani and Hekmatyar will join forces with General Abdul Rashid Dostum, a warlord who runs a virtually independent kingdom in the north. Another is that King Zahir Shah, who was deposed in 1973, could return from exile in Rome to assert some authority. Shah, 82 years old and ailing, may not be up to the job of national conciliator.

Some are willing to believe that the young, unknown Taliban should be given a chance, since there is no other option. "It is true that the Taliban will insist on Islamic law," says a former Najibullah aide. "But people say at least now there will be just one law. Under the mujahedin, everyone had his own law." In Afghanistan today, that's the sweetest dream: peace and order throughout the land, no matter who is in charge.

--Reported by Meenakshi Ganguly/New Delhi and Alan Pearce/Kabul