Switching sides in Afghanistan's war can be as simple as changing a hat or trimming a beard.
When Tazagol (30) and Abdul Qayum (25) showed up at Commander Shireen Beg's United Front post in this mountain district just north of Kabul a few days ago, the first thing they did was remove the black turbans which marked them as Taliban and replace them with the round pakol hats worn by United Front fighters.
A few hours before I met them, the men trimmed their beards, Tazagol for the first time in two years, Abdul Qayum in 12 months. "The Taliban ordered us never to cut our beards - if we did, they would paint our faces black," says Abdul Qayum.
The defectors sent their wives, children and livestock across the frontline first, then walked for 2 1/2 hours with 18 men under their command to reach the armed opposition's enclave.
Tazagol claims he was forced into service with the Taliban in 1999. Abdul Qayum says he went over to Mullah Omar's forces a year ago, to act as a spy for the United Front. Both men are Pashtuns, the ethnic group which dominates the Taliban.
Front officials claim some 5,000 Taliban fighters across Afghanistan have defected to their side since the US bombardment started. Although the figures are impossible to verify, defection - often for money - is a tradition in the 23-year Afghan war. Soldiers never surrender; they just change sides before it is too late, avoiding being taken prisoner or becoming refugees with their families.
There is no shame attached to such fickle behaviour. In 1996, the year the Taliban seized power, the Pakistani-backed fundamentalists simply bought off most of the Pashtun areas, a process that is now in slow reversal.
In one of the most spectacular defections, the ethnic Uzbek Gen Abdul Malik left the United Front for the Taliban in 1997, allegedly in exchange for $20 million, a helicopter and several Japanese landcruisers. Abdul Malik's treachery precipitated the fall of Mazar-e-Sharif, the northern city which the United Front may reconquer at any moment, thanks to mass defections in Taliban ranks this week.
In such a poor country, it is perhaps understandable that money is on everyone's mind. After September 11th, Abdul Qayum says: "The Taliban ordered us, 'If you catch an American or any Westerner, kill him and we will pay you $50,000'."
Would they have been tempted to sell me? I asked. "If I was there," Tazagol joins in, "I would take you and sell you to the Taliban." There are more than a dozen mujaheddin in the room, and they burst into laughter.
After a long moment, Tazagol apologises. "I made a joke," he says. "I would never do such a thing. I came here to fight terrorists."
Tazagol and Abdul Qayum say they received no financial reward for defecting. There's no need to pay men to change sides when they're at risk from American bombardment, local United Front Commanders say disdainfully. But Shireen Beg still thinks money could bring the war to a fast conclusion.
"If anyone is willing to pay for the Taliban, I can deliver them immediately," he boasts.
Although a Pashtun, Tazagol's home in the village of Qala Khalifa, from which he was taken by the Taliban to fight in 1999, is on the Tajik side of the frontline.
The day before I met him, Taliban gunners up the mountain punished Tazagol's defection by killing five of his goats with their heavy machine gun.
Abdul Qayum's home in Khanai Darab was on the Taliban side of the line, which helps to explain why he joined Mullah Omar's forces, even though his brother Bismillah was a United Front soldier.
"The Taliban knew I had links with the United Front and they were suspicious," Abdul Qayum says. "They put me in prison for three months. I saw them beat people and bring people by force to the front line. If a person refuses to go with them, he has to pay 5 million afghanis ($150)."
In Afghan tradition, a person with three character witnesses must be trusted. "My father-in-law and two brothers-in-law acted as guarantors for me," Abdul Qayum says, "so the Taliban gave me a gun and I fought against the United Front.
"When I left, the Taliban arrested my father-in-law and my wife's brothers and burned their houses and put them in prison. They destroyed my house too."
He shows equal disregard for relatives on both sides of the line.
"I was fighting my brother. He was in front of me (on the United Front side). I shot many rockets at my brother, but I didn't manage to kill him." Again, the room fills with laughter. "Now I am going to fight the Taliban," he adds.
Does he have no compunction about attacking the men he lived with for the past year? "If I was willing to try to kill my own brother, why should I worry about fighting the Taliban now?" he answers.