To his professors and peers at Kabul University, Abdul is the epitome of a model student.

The 21-year-old law undergraduate takes copious notes in class, always finishes assignments on time and hopes to become a teacher when he graduates.

What they do not know is that when class is over he spends his time on less wholesome activities - watching videos of bomb attacks on American troops and plotting to overthrow the Afghan Government.

Abdul is not just a Taleban sympathiser: he is a member of a secret Taleban cell at Kabul University that claims several hundred members and is a worrying new sign of the movement’s expanding influence.

“At the time of the Taleban there was security and basic justice and prices were not as high as now,” Abdul told The Times. “There also was not as much corruption. Lots of aid money comes to Afghanistan and disappears. We want to liberate our country, to remove these authorities and do something for the people.”

The university cell does not fight but is ready to take up arms if called upon by its leaders, according to Abdul and another member, who gave false names. “I’ll fight until I die but I won’t do suicide because it’s forbidden in Islam,” said Abdul, who claims to have recruited nine other students.

The university cell illustrates how the influence of the Taleban has spread beyond its traditional support base in the south - and right to the heart of Afghanistan’s most prestigious educational institution and its largest with 12,000 students. It also shows how the movement appeals to educated young Afghans as well as the poor, illiterate farmers who make up the bulk of its fighting force.

At the same time it suggests that the Taleban is divided between extremists, who target civilians and reject all forms of modernity, and relative moderates, who want development but oppose foreign troops.

Abdul said that he was recruited by a Taleban “representative” from his region a month after he arrived at the university last year. One of his motivations was a Nato air raid on his village in the eastern province of Paktia, which he says killed 25 people, including several cousins, last year.

Javed, a literature student, said that he joined the Taleban after three months at the university, angered by the death of a 19-year-old woman in a house raid by American troops in his village in the southeastern province of Khost. He said that he had since recruited 16 other students.

Javed and Abdul said that they did not know the identity of their ultimate leader on campus because the cell was structured to prevent members from informing on one another. “Everything is very secret. Everyone knows one or two people,” Javed, 25, said.

“We don’t know how many we are because we don’t get together in a conference hall.

But there are hundreds and the numbers are increasing.”

Several other students and teachers said that they were aware of the cell but refused to discuss it with a foreign reporter. Abdul Azim Noorbaksh, a university spokesman, admitted that Taleban activity was a problem on campus but said that the university authorities had no power to stop it.

“We try to teach students to choose some better alternative,” he said. “If they join a political or religious movement, that’s their own business. It is up to the Government to respond.”

The Interior Ministry said that it was keeping a close eye on the campus, where political activity is banned, but did not yet regard the Taleban cell as a serious problem.

“Their ideology is very different from those fighting the Government,” Abdul Hakim Asher, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said. “They are ordinary students. They are not a threat.”

Abdul and Javed agreed that they had no sympathy for Taleban militants who killed civilians, used suicide bombers and burnt down schools. “They are supported by the Pakistanis,” Javed said. “We are with the real Taleban, who only target foreign troops.”

The pair also said that their leaders, while wanting to introduce Sharia, tolerated music, films, men without beards and women’s education.

They said that there was nothing moderate about their hatred of President Karzai and the international community, which they said had brought nothing but corruption to Afghanistan. “They haven’t done anything in seven years,” Javed said. “The international community isn’t here to bring peace and security, but to destroy our country and to kill Muslims.”

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