AMID the celebrations to mark the arrival of the Taliban in Kabul three years ago was an ominous sign of things to come. Cassettes, videos and televisions were smashed in the street, cameras destroyed, even soft toys ripped into pieces - all forbidden under the Taliban's interpretation of the Koran.

Music was also banned, along with flying kites and forecasting the weather. To predict tomorrow's weather was seen as trying to second-guess God.

The Ministry of Vice and Virtue was set up to enforce the new, hardline laws. Women had their legal rights withdrawn, left unable to work and deprived of education, only able to appear in public if their entire body was covered. Women who appeared in public without a chaperone were beaten.

The ministry's beard patrols monitored the ban on shaving. A man whose facial hair did not reach at least a fist-length below his chin was beaten.

Earlier this year, a Pakistani football team on a tour of Afghanistan had their heads shaved as punishment for wearing shorts and exposing their legs to public view.

"The Taliban, without question, are hoping to create a theocratic society, ruled in the name of God," says Phil Andre, a lecturer in religious studies at Newcastle University. "Because we come from a secular background, we regard theocratic governments as anomalous, it seems bizarre."

About one tenth of Afghanistan's population has fled the country, with more than two million refugees scattered throughout the world, the vast majority living in camps in neighbouring Pakistan. Some of these have escaped the poverty brought on by two decades of war and United Nations sanctions, imposed in the wake of previous terrorist attacks blamed on Osama bin Laden, but some have fled from the oppression of extremism.

And their views have left Afghanistan with few friends in the international community. Just a handful of countries recognise the Taliban regime, including Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. "Very few Muslims globally sympathise with what is happening in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan," says Mr Andre. "They do not represent mainstream Islam in any way, shape or form. The vast majority of Muslims are greatly embarrassed by what is done in the name of Islam by the Taliban."

But the Taliban's influence has not been entirely negative. They have brought order to a country torn apart through 20 years of conflict, ever since the Soviet Union invaded in 1979, to prop up Afghanistan's ailing communist regime.

Throughout a bitter ten-year conflict, the military might of the Soviet Union, then a world superpower, was unable to defeat the mujahadeen, a disparate force of rebel commanders, who refused to hand over their homeland to a foreign invader. Using the hostile terrain and Western-supplied weapons, the mujahadeen inflicted a humiliating defeat on the Soviets, their own equivalent of Vietnam.

After Soviet withdrawal in 1989, it was another three years before the communist government capitulated, and the mujahadeen were able to enter Kabul in triumph.

"The mujahadeen had never been a highly-organised, national body. They had always fought within their own tribal groups," says Mr Andrew. "The west was hoping these groups would subsume their tribal differences and come together to rebuild the country after the war.

"But the Taliban came on the scene, out of the refugee camps, and proved to be a force mightier than the mujahadeen. They were such a highly organised movement, very centralised, with a strong ideological conviction that what they were doing was right. They believe everything they do is endorsed by God, and the mujahadeen were simply swept aside."

As the West withdrew its support for the mujahadeen, thinking the end of the war against communism was enough, so the Taliban - the name means 'religious student' - moved in to fill the vacuum. From their first appearance about six years ago, they grew to control about half of Afghanistan three years ago and now rule 90 per cent of the country.

'Whatever problems the Taliban appear to bring to the wider world, they have at least brought a degree of stability and security to Afghanistan that has not been the case for more than 20 years," says Mr Andre. "You have to acknowledge, that, in many ways, life for ordinary citizens in Afghanistan is better now than it has been for some time.

"It also has to be seen against the background of a hated communist regime, and an invasion by Soviet forces. They are a fiercely independent nation and they don't like outside control." And there have been recent signs of a relaxation of some laws. Aid agencies have managed to convince the regime that the agencies themselves should be able to provide education for some women.

"These little modifications are revealing, in that they show you can negotiate with the Taliban," says Mr Andre. "There is some evidence that the longer they're in power, the more they likely to respond to more pragmatic approaches."

Harbouring Osama bin Laden, the man suspected of being behind the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, has put Afghanistan in the front line of any US-led reprisals. Placing him under house arrest yesterday may have been an attempt to avoid attack, but it may take more than that to escape altogether.

"I think he is a bit of an embarrassment to the Taliban. There is some evidence that the Taliban enjoyed some support from Saudi Arabia when it established its authority in Afghanistan, and I think this is how bin Laden, who is a Saudi citizen, became based there," says Mr Andre.

"He had fought on behalf of the mujahadeen, to get rid of the communist regime, and there certainly was a time when he was thought to be a useful ally. Other than the support they have enjoyed from Pakistan, the Taliban have been ostracised, even within the Muslim world, and the despised, hated and vilified have to take support from wherever it is available.

"Osama bin Laden has also brought a lot of money into the country, so there is a trade-off. This has helped arm the Taliban, making sure the police and the army have the ability to maintain their control, and there are also rumours he has supported hospitals and schools. Sometimes, these people who are vilified as terrorists are doing some good within their own community.

"Even if bin Laden is responsible for these dreadful outrages, I think it is highly unlikely that he is being supported by the Taliban, which may be indicative that he is an embarrassment to them."