Other, more insidious, dangers remain: Recent terrorist attacks in Kabul and elsewhere prove that political violence is an ongoing threat. Also, as returnees pour in, the city’s population is soaring—estimates range from 1.5 to 2.5 million people—and Kabul is barely able to cope. Sewage is simply dumped into water channels, polluting wells. Water shortages, poor hygiene, and piles of garbage are boosting the dangers of cholera and dysentery. Leishmaniasis, an ulcerous skin disease, has become epdemic.

And yet the most immediate impression one has on arrival in Kabul is of exhilaration and confidence. Much of this stems from the holding of the Loya Jirga, or Grand Council, in June, which signaled for most Afghans the beginning of a new era with the election of a broad-based interim government. And though many Afghans, particularly Kabulis, regard the Loya Jirga as rigged, they also view it as the first time in decades that ordinary Afghans were able to express themselves openly.

For countless Afghans Kabul’s renaissance represents a golden opportunity that cannot be squandered. I heard this voiced by Lateef Khalid, a 40-year-old teacher who was preparing to return to Kabul after spending 20 years in Pakistan. "If we don’t resolve our problems now," he said, "then we will have missed a chance that may never come again."

Get the whole story in the pages of National Geographic magazine.

In April 1978 a group of Afghan Marxist military officers overthrew the government of President Mohammad Daoud, who had himself come to power through a coup five years earlier. Within days of the coup the Afghan communist party proclaimed the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and soon began imposing Soviet-style social and economic reforms, most of which ran counter to Afghan Muslim traditions. Opposition developed quickly, and the government responded with arrests and executions. In September 1978 uprisings began in the eastern part of the country and Afghanistan’s long years of war were under way. Through the winter and into the summer of 1979, insurrection spread across the countryside and within the Afghan Army. The government tried to regain control by increasing its reliance on Soviet weapons, while concurrently trying to keep Soviet political control at a distance. With an uneasy eye on the growing chaos, the Soviet Union began massing troops along the shared border in the autumn of 1979. By mid-December, the situation in Afghanistan had deteriorated to the point that the president had taken refuge in a palace outside Kabul and was being guarded by a small contingent of loyal troops. On December 24 the Soviets invaded.

—Patricia Kellogg