The United Front, the only armed opposition to the Taliban within Afghanistan, are sending hundreds of fighters south towards Kabul, in the hope of retaking the capital they lost five years ago to Mullah Omar's regime.
In the course of an 18-hour drive through the Kukcha and Panjshir river valleys yesterday, The Irish Times encountered six Soviet-made Kamaz trucks packed with guerrillas inching their way southwest towards the capital. All said they had received orders from Gen Mohamed Fahim, commander-in-chief of the Front (also known as the Northern Alliance) to liberate Kabul from the Taliban.
In this village at the northern end of the Panjshir Valley, I saw dozens of men running down a hillside next to the local headquarters of the Islamic State Army, as the Front's guerrillas are known. Three anti-aircraft artillery pieces were installed in front of the building "against Taliban attacks," I was told.
Smiling and laughing, the men piled into the back of the freight lorry. All carried Kalashnikov assault riffles, and at least one carried a rocket launcher.
"They have come from surrounding villages. We are going to Kabul," said Mahmoud Younes, the local commander. The men were poor farmers - reservists - who had not fought the Taliban for a year. "The terrorists are in Kabul and we are going to fight them," he added. "Gen Fahim gave the order for 600 more to go to Kabul today."
Mr Younes said the fighters had waited overnight for a truck and that all men between 18 and 35 were ordered to report for duty, without exception.
The United Front is 40 km from the Afghan capital. Asked when his men would attack, Mr Younes replied: "We don't know because our soldiers are not prepared yet. Maybe in one week."
It is not clear whether the Front's mobilisation is being carried out in co-ordination with the US or as an independent initiative. British and American bombers have so far left frontline Taliban artillery positions outside Kabul untouched.
Earlier, further north at Iskozar in the Kukcha River Valley, I encountered several hundred United Front fighters at a grotty rest stop. Their commander, Rolam Jailoni, said 400 men under his orders had left the Front's military headquarters at Khoja Bahuddin, near the Tajik border, three days earlier.
Mr Jailoni and his unit are all from Shomali, the plain northeast of Kabul which the Taliban seized from the United Front in 1998. He said he would gather his troops near his former home and wait for the order to attack Kabul. Two of Mr Jailoni's sons, aged 14 and 15, were travelling with his unit. "I am going to fight with our father. We have been fighting for three years with him," said 14-year-old Qandagh.
At the 4,000-metre-high pass separating the sources of the Kukcha and Panjshir rivers, a Kamaz truck had broken down and blocked the rugged dirt road. Two hours down the road, another lorry packed with guerrillas stopped to ask how many similar trucks I had passed.
Communications between United Front units are apparently as poorly maintained as their trucks. But a ground offensive against Kabul would be a serious complication for the Taliban regime as the US and Britain continue bombardments.