KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 14— Serving alongside Pakistani, Chechen and Arab volunteers, Atiqurahman manned a post on the second line of Taliban forces in the village of Kalai Nasro near the Bagram air base 35 miles north of Kabul.

Now, after abandoning his position and trudging toward the capital as Northern Alliance forces burst through his line, the 23-year-old soldier from Kandahar is a prisoner, and fearful of his future.

''What should I do?'' Atiqurahman whispered at one point during a meeting in his temporary jail, a shipping container in Kabul. ''Will they kill us or not?''

The Northern Alliance tried to calm such fears as they tightened their control over Kabul today and as rebellion against the Taliban spread to the eastern city of Jalalabad and to the mullahs' southern stronghold of Kandahar.

As American jets continued to bomb targets south of Jalalabad -- an area thought to contain hideouts of Osama bin Laden's Qaeda terrorists -- Gen. Fazil Ahmed Azimi, commander of alliance forces in eastern Afghanistan, said his troops hoped to secure firm control of the eastern city within days. They would count on more defections from the Taliban rather than a military attack, he said.

''We don't want more fighting,'' he said. ''We don't want more victims.''

That seemed to be a message the Northern Alliance was eager to spread today, perhaps to counter reports from United Nations aid workers of massacres, executions, looting and other crimes committed by alliance soldiers as half of Afghanistan fell suddenly into their hands in recent days.

Foreign governments pondering Afghanistan's governance are also pressing the alliance to show restraint and to reach out to all Afghans.

General Azimi said alliance representatives were in Jalalabad negotiating with local commanders, who would hold a council to reach a decision about linking up with the alliance. ''We should know the result in a day or two,'' the general said.

But Yunus Khalis, a Pashtun mullah in Jalalabad and a leader of some influence there, was quoted in Afghan media as rejecting any deal and saying Northern Alliance forces should not try to enter the city.

Alberto Cairo, who has worked for the International Red Cross in Afghanistan for 12 years, said the shift in power was the most peaceful he had seen in a country ruined by 22 years of almost continual fighting and fast-shifting alliances among rival clans and warlords.

He said his organization had collected the bodies of 10 Afghan and Pakistani fighters in the capital, but could not say whether they had died in fighting or in reprisals as the Northern Alliance forces entered Kabul on Tuesday.

He praised the general lack of violence and looting in the city and the work so far of the roughly 2,000 alliance policemen and soldiers securing it.

''I am surprised that things have gone so well,'' he said. ''Bad things could still happen, but for now I'm very optimistic.''

For a second day, Kabul's streets hummed with activities barred by the Taliban. Restaurants blared music, men skipped the call to prayer and some cast off their burkas, the head-to-toe veil required by the Taliban.

Workers clambered on to the building of Radio Afghanistan, proudly restoring its lettering, and a broadcaster who had run a radio station for the Northern Alliance, Muhammad Alam Ezdediar, took control, hiring three women as news readers and airing music and statements from the alliance defense ministry urging people to remain calm and to go to work.

Alliance leaders like Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, the foreign minister, moved into cavernous, empty ministry buildings. Alliance officials also said their president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, would head an interim government and enter the city soon, a move likely to bring protests from Pakistan, which had insisted that one price for its new allegiance to Washington was that the alliance not take power.

But Yunus Qanooni, an alliance leader, reiterated that the alliance favored what he called a broad-based, multiethnic interim government.

In what they called a precautionary step, alliance officials imposed an 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew. They also said carrying firearms would be banned as of Saturday. Truckloads of alliance soldiers continued to move through the city, but the bulk of them appeared to be headed for the front lines east and south of Kabul, which were off limits to reporters.

Atiqurahman, the Taliban soldier, who has only one name, was not convinced by the alliance's message of control and tolerance. A wiry, bearded young man with piercing light-brown eyes, dressed in soiled clothes, he anxiously protested his innocence, insisting that the Taliban had forced him to fight against his will.

When American planes began bombing their positions in October, he said, neither he nor his fellow fighters were much impressed. Then, in the last two weeks, heavy bombing runs, particularly by B-52's, intensified, and Taliban soldiers were getting killed. ''Our morale was getting lower and lower,'' he recalled.

Atiqurahman and his remaining comrades abandoned their positions on Monday, after alliance soldiers suddenly appeared behind Taliban lines because Taliban units on his flanks had defected. ''We realized we couldn't fight,'' he said, and he spent the next 14 hours walking toward Kabul with three other soldiers.

Atiqurahman said he had surrendered without resistance. Alliance soldiers said he was captured after a fire fight in which he killed an alliance soldier.