KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan men and women flocked to mosques and stadiums nationwide Thursday to mark one of the most hallowed occasions on the traditional calendar, the old Persian New Year, enjoying a celebration denied them by the Taliban.
The festive scenes in Kabul and other major cities captured the hopeful mood that continues to sweep the country four months after the Taliban collapsed, heightened now by warm spring weather. Large crowds battled their way into mosques to kiss special new year pillars carrying religious banners, a ritual forbidden by the Taliban as superstitious and un-Islamic.
But concerns about the country's future were never far away.
The skies over Kabul captured something of the counterpoints. At the capital's main sports stadium, a woman who once served in the officer corps of the country's communist army parachuted earthward beneath a canopy painted in the red, green and black colors of the new national flag. A few miles away, American helicopters could be seen flying low across the horizon toward the south on new missions to search out remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaida.
Only weeks ago, the prospects for spring, which began officially on Thursday, seemed somewhat brighter. Few then foresaw that Taliban and al-Qaida forces would be capable of fighting an 11-day battle with American combat troops, as they did this month in the Shah-i-Kot valley, 90 miles south of Kabul. Not many Afghans would have believed after the Taliban government's disintegration began that American commanders would warn, as they did this week, that more battles like Shah-i-Kot would almost certainly lie ahead before the war in Afghanistan was won.
American officers said Thursday more than 10 bodies were found by search parties in the area of an American bombing strike called in after a mortar, grenade and machinegun attack Tuesday night on a U.S. Special Forces base at Khost. Maj. Bryan Hilferty, chief spokesman for the American command at the Bagram air base north of Kabul, said that the detainee would be questioned to determine whether he was a member of the Taliban or al-Qaida. On the occasion of Nowruz, an ancient Zoroastrian New Year rite celebrated in Iran, Afghanistan and across much of central Asia, the country's new leaders struck an optimistic note. But even they transmitted a sense of unease about the country's fragile security. Hamid Karzai, leader of the interim government that took power in December, followed tradition by traveling to the 500-year-old blue mosque in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif to join crowds in the flag-raising ceremony that heralds the new year.
At one point, the ceremonies were going to be conducted by the former king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, as his first engagement after his return to Afghanistan from 29 years in exile in Italy. But that plan was abandoned when American and Afghan security officials decided that Mazar-i-Sharif, one of many Afghan cities contested by rival warlords, would not be safe.
The former king, who is 87, is now scheduled to arrive in Kabul on Tuesday, setting foot in a land he last saw when Mohammad Daoud, his cousin, overthrew him while he was receiving medical treatment abroad in 1973. One way or another, his trip is expected to be a watershed.
Officially, he is coming as a gesture of support to the Karzai government, not to lobby for restoration of the Durrani dynasty, which ruled for 225 years. But many Pashtuns, the country's largest ethnic group and formerly the bedrock of support for the Taliban, have chosen the king as a rallying point, in large measure because the Durranis are Pashtuns.
Karzai, a Pashtun tribal leader himself, heads a government dominated by ethnic Tajiks, the next largest population group. Fighting in the Northern Alliance, they offered the staunchest resistance to the Taliban. Some Tajiks remain strongly opposed to the monarchy's restoration and are wary of the former king's return.
Thus the government is split on a key political issue as it also faces the challenge of warlords who have taken control of much of the country.
Even for Karzai, who has traveled the world since December in pursuit of support for his government, the trip on Thursday was his first to Mazar-i-Sharif, the principal city north of the Hindu Kush mountains, since taking office.
In his speech, Karzai spoke hopefully, but warily, of the country's prospects. "In this new year, God willing, complete peace will come to Afghanistan," he said. "The people will live without weapons. The time for weapons is finished."
Beside him, one of the most powerful warlords, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, offered his own reassurance. "I want the United States of America to know that we will fight terrorism together with them and with all other civilized nations until the end," he said. Dostum is an ethnic Uzbek leader who holds the largely nominal title of deputy defense minister in Karzai's government.
Karzai said nothing in his speech about his latest worry: the decision by the United States and its principal Western partners not to expand the 4,500-man international security force deployed in Kabul since December.
Vice President Dick Cheney, visiting Turkey on Wednesday, told reporters that the Bush administration had decided that training the national army, not expanding the international force, was the way to bolster Afghanistan's security.
Karzai had been petitioning Western governments to increase the force and deploy units in cities other than Kabul, to which it is now restricted under the terms of its current mandate.
He has argued that Afghanistan cannot begin to rebuild from 23 years of war unless there is security across the country. To help his government spread its authority beyond Kabul, he has called for a security force of perhaps 20,000 to 30,000 troops to be deployed until a new Afghan national army can be built up.
There was no official reaction on Thursday to Washington's decision. Karzai's defense ministry has said it could be five years before a national army is strong enough to confront the warlords.