Kras Gai Ursgan is a small district in southern Afghanistan. Over the past 40 years, it's seen some of the worst fighting in the whole country.

And as Afghanistan disintegrated throughout the 1990s, older ethnic and tribal ties again became the ultimate measure of who Afghans could

trust.

In November 2001, with control over most of the country, the Americans set up counter-terror operations, and

Afghans learned that if they wanted to eliminate a personal rival in a power struggle, land grab, or business dispute. All they had to do was

tell the soldiers that their foe belonged to the Taliban.

One morning in late January 2002, a local official in Haas-Ursgan named Ali checked up on the town's schoolhouse.

Previously vacant, it had been repurposed for the interim post-Taliban Afghan government.

When Ali got closer, what he found was a massacre. The journalist Adnan Gopal lays out the

scene in his book, No Good Men Among the Living.

Near the door to the main building, thees of his shoes began to squish and he glanced down and recoiled.

It was blood. When he looked up he saw it everywhere, smeared on the walls, puddled on the walkway. He turned to the knob of a classroom

and stepped inside. There, lying on blood-sodden sleeping mats, were the bodies of a pro-American government official and his aides.

These men, 19 in total, had been killed by U.S. Special Forces.

It turned out that the Americans had been fed a bad tip by a local rival

of the dead men. They didn't bother to check it out. And now Afghans who had supported the Americans were dead.

This kind of thing would render official body counts and the distinction between

enemy and civilian highly suspect. And it would not be the last time

Uruzgan itself was punished.

Quote in July, AC-130 gun ships shot up four villages in Uruzgan province, killing 54 people while

families were celebrating a wedding, writes Ahmed Rashid. That same month, he

continues, U.S. forces launched six raids into Urusgan, but did not capture a single Taliban leader,

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