It was almost midnight and the plane was six miles above Afghanistan's desolate mountains, en route from Frankfurt to New Delhi, when the pilot gave us the news.

"We have confirmed reports that the World Trade Center in New York has been hit by two aircraft. One of the towers has collapsed," he said. "We are continuing on our flight course and will update you if there is any change in plans."

Two aircraft. It couldn't be an accident. A collapsed tower. Thousands would have died.

Suddenly, no one was sleeping. The in flight movie was ignored. Everyone was up and talking about what had happened and who might have been responsible.

"This is terrible," said one crying woman. Her nephew, like thousands of other Indian nationals, worked in New York's financial district.

"America had this coming," said someone a few rows back. "They're reaping what they've sown."

Through all this commotion, the Sikh gentleman beside me had sat silently, staring out the window. Now, he turned slowly towards me and said something that will stick in my mind forever.

"It's bin Laden, finishing what he started in 1993, " he said, matter-of-factly.

He gestured out the window at the darkness below.

"He's down there laughing right now."

What he said made sense. If he was right, all our lives had been changed by this event.

The United States would retaliate against Afghanistan. Of that, there was no question in our minds. A region that had been all but ignored by the world since the Soviet withdrawal in 1980s was now back in the spotlight.

The enormity of it all hit several hours later when I was alone in the room of my New Delhi guesthouse watching replays of the notorious footage on the all news channels.

I'd been en route to India to set up a new bureau for CTV. My plans -- to find an apartment for my wife and children, and set up an office -- were now on hold. The next morning, I was at the Pakistani High Commission getting my visa. Three days later, I was on the flight to Islamabad with dozens of other journalists, to start reporting on the war and strife we all knew would come.

The American bombing began less than a month later. We knew the effect it was having, not because of what we could see from the rooftop of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, but because of what we heard from those Afghanis who fled their homes and headed for the relative safety of neighbouring Pakistan.

Nearly three million of them had fled civil war and drought over the previous decade. Now, hundreds of thousands of more were living in the open or in makeshift tents near the Pakistani border.

Last November, 14-year-old Asef and his nine-year-old sister were among the masses sitting in the searing heat at the Chaman border crossing in southwest Afghanistan. They had spent the family savings of $40 to pay for the four-hour ride from Kandahar and escape the U.S. bombing that had left them orphaned.

Two days earlier, they had gone to the market in the southern Afghan city to buy food for the family's supper. When they returned home, they found an errant U.S. bomb had landed on their home, killing their mother and father instantly.

Asef had managed to pull a few things from the wreckage -- a blackened pot, a chipped teacup, his mother's favourite blue dress.

"The Americans have taken her from us," he said, blinking back tears. "What are we to do now?" Since the war's end, an estimated 1.6 million refugees have returned home to Afghanistan, but the future for them and the rest of Afghanistan's 19 million citizens is uncertain.

When Hamid Karzai was sworn in as interim president in late December, hundreds of people took to the streets in Kabul in support of his promise of equal rights for women and end to the human rights abuses that characterized the Taliban regime. That promise will be hard to keep.

That day, hope for the future was visible in the smiling face of a man named Abdul, as he watched the ceremony with his son and daughter from the balcony of their third floor apartment across the street.

"This is a new beginning for Afghanistan," he told me. "Now my daughter can go to school again. Maybe someday she can be a doctor."

Just as we were finishing the interview, some of the interim government's newly-formed police force arrived. One officer used his Kalashnikov to butt-end Abdul in the side of the head. Two others dragged him off into an abandoned building nearby. They released him a few minutes later, but only after we threatened to take the footage we had of the incident to a higher authority.

For too long, power in Afghanistan has come from the barrel of a gun. That culture will not change quickly or easily. Ethnic divisions between the Pashtun majority and the Tajik minority, who control most of the key posts in the new government, have the potential to plunge the country back into another bloody civil war. Two Pashtun cabinet ministers, including vice-president Haji Abdul Quadir, have been assassinated in the six months since the Karzai government took power.

If war doesn't erupt again and threaten the civilian population, then the legacy of past conflicts will.

There are an estimated 10 million landmines strewn about the country. The U.S. bombing added tens of thousands more hazards.

In farmer's fields north of Kabul, they were removing unexploded American cluster bomblets this spring where just a few years earlier they had dug up mines laid during the Soviet occupation.

"It's a seemingly endless job, and it just got bigger," said Dan Kelly, a Canadian who heads up the UN de-mining effort. "We have years of work ahead of us."

A visit to the Italian-run emergency hospital in Kabul leaves no doubt about the continuing threat landmines pose. The beds are full of patients, many of them children, with bandaged stumps where there used to be hands or legs.

"We can sew them up," said Dr. Marco Garatti, "but the future for them is not bright. They won't be able to find work. Many of them will have to beg to make their way in life.''

During a recent visit to Kabul, it's clear the events of Sept. 11 and those that followed have brought change to the lives of people in Afghanistan. The Taliban are gone. They're playing soccer again in the stadium where they used to hold public executions. Women are back working in the schools and hospitals. Some are even brave enough to walk the streets with their heads uncovered.

A year ago at the Afghan film board, they had to hide away their films so the authorities wouldn't burn them in their zeal to rid the country of any human or animal image. Now, the cameramen and editors are back shooting documentaries.

"There is a future for our country," says one board employee, "and it's our job to chronicle what happens."