Law and order has begun to break down in Kabul amid signs the United States may be preparing to strike Afghanistan.
Residents are reporting armed daylight robberies, looting and shooting by Taliban security guards.
Many of the new attacks were carried out by looters posing as members of the Taliban's feared religious police.
"Mainly men carrying arms are entering people's homes under the guise of checking to see if they have arms or are watching a movie or listening to music," said one resident.
"The owner of the house lets them in because he has nothing to hide. Then he and the rest of the male family members are rounded up and women are forced to hand them over cash or jewellery," he said.
Kabul, a city once known for its streets lined with roses but pounded almost to rubble by factional fighting in the 1990s, is home to the poorest of Afghanistan's 20 million people.
The capture of the capital by the hardline Taliban in 1996 marked the return of law and order as the purist movement imposed its Islamic system of government.
The slide towards lawlessness came as a council of Afghanistan's leading clerics ruled Osama bin Laden should leave voluntarily after a warning from their leader that the United States was bent on the Taliban's destruction.
The US has vowed to hunt down bin Laden - who lives as a "guest" of the Taliban - and to punish his protectors. The Saudi-born dissident is the chief suspect in last week's suicide attacks on Washington and New York that killed nearly 6,000 people.