TOWDABAY KALAY, Afghanistan — The American soldiers knew little about this farming village in the rugged foothills of Paktika Province in eastern Afghanistan, but they were told the Taliban moved through regularly.

When the soldiers, part of the First Battalion, 506th Infantry, arrived on foot one morning, hiking along terraced fields carved into the steep hillsides, they found the villagers fearful. Not just of the Taliban, but of NATO forces as well.

“We are scared of both sides,” a village elder, Mutayeb Khan, told the soldiers, expressing a litany of concerns shared by many villagers in remote parts of the country.

They worry that NATO and Afghan forces will confuse them for insurgents while they’re tending their fields or collecting wood in the hills; that the Taliban will attack them if they help, or even talk to coalition forces; that government forces will detain their young men, perhaps for years..