The mujaheddin had travelled for six days from Takhar in northern Afghanistan to reach the Shomali Plain above Kabul, and they were jubilant as they tore through the streets of Jabal Saraj yesterday, packed standing up in the truck bed, a cage d chicken poised over the cab. "Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar," was the fighters' battle cry as they passed American cameramen waiting at the crossroads. They fired Kalashnikovs into the air and the gunmen pressed back so an old man with a long grey beard could dance a jig in the moving truck.
The "Islamic State Army" lorry appeared to be heading for the front line at Bagram, and it was easy to assume they were celebrating the imminent liberation of Kabul. At Charikar, the last big town before the capital, the fighters clambered over a former Soviet tank by the roadside. Through the photographers' lenses, it must have looked the very picture of combat.
Except that it wasn't. When I asked the old man why he was dancing, he said he was happy to be back in Shomali, after four months on the Khojaghar frontline in the north. What looked like part of a military build-up by the United Front, also known as the Northern Alliance, turned out to be a routine troop rotation. "We don't know if we will fight or not," one of the mujaheddin admitted. With a cheery cry of, "Death to Pakistan. Death to Osama. Death to Mullah Omar," they were off to their home villages.
Speculation about an imminent United Front offensive against Kabul began with the US and British bombardments on October 7th. The Front has grown impatient waiting for the US to bomb Taliban frontline positions.
Two gestures this week - a half-dozen bombs dropped on the Taliban side of Shomali on Tuesday and Wednesday, and US Defence Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld's allusion to air support, ammunition and food to help the Front take Mazar-e-Sharif and Kabul - were interpreted here as an attempt to placate and hold back the restless guerrillas.
The long wait is ratcheting up the pressure on the United Front's disunited leaders. Their mujaheddin are indisciplined, and it could be dangerous to leave troop reinforcements inactive on the Shomali front line.
The Front has had five years to prove it could liberate Kabul without US help, and has not done so. But each day the Front's leadership waits for US permission to attack, it loses credibility at home.
Mullah Amin, who teaches theology in Jabal Saraj, said the 4,000 mullahs in the United Front's enclave "want the fighting between Muslims to stop".
That would mean a negotiated settlement between the Taliban and the Front - a highly unrealistic proposal.
"If Kabul is captured by the United Front and there are foreign powers inside Afghanistan," the mullah adds, "there will be no peace in this country for a long time." That sentiment is widespread.
"It would be good if the Americans could get rid of the Taliban and go," said Aziz Agha, a 22 year-old fighter who is recovering from a landmine explosion. "But if the Americans come here and stay, it will not be good for us."
Dr Marco Garatti, a surgeon with the Italian doctors' group, Emergency, in the Panjshir Valley, says he expects a substantial increase in casualties. "This front will not stay quiet," he predicts. "You can smell it; the number of trucks going towards the front lines; people buying shoes and supplies in the bazaar."
While the medical relief group waits for the ground war on Shomali Plain, Emergency is increasing its hospital beds from 100 to 400. In the meantime, victims of landmines left by the Soviet army continue to outnumber casualties of frontline fighting.