KABUL, Afghanistan — Murtaza Ahmadi was one of those Afghans who somehow never seemed to suffer from the long war.

No one in his family perished on the front lines with the army or the police, or disappeared for years with the Taliban only to come back in a plywood coffin. No one close to him had the bad luck to be where a bomb went off or to get caught in crossfire, relatives said.

Mr. Ahmadi’s luck suddenly ran out in March. No bomb or gun was involved, but he was targeted nonetheless — for the bundles of cash he handled in his job every day, and for the 6-year-old daughter more precious to him than any of that.

Earlier in the war, Mr. Ahmadi had moved to Kabul, the capital, from his home province of Kapisa, north of the city. He was never a wealthy man, but he found a good job as one of the money changers in the Sarai Shahzada market in Kabul, where men with rubber bands around fat wads of notes hawk their exchange rates in the open air, their loud voices clamoring into unintelligibility.