Part one: The shura

The Afghans scrutinize the young lieutenants as they peel off their body armor. Then the soldiers of Dog Company of the 1-32nd Infantry sit quietly on the wood and leather benches and wait for the shura to start. In the background is the province's first major road linking the cities of Jalalabad and Asadabad. Running alongside the road is the Kunar River and beyond it, the mountains and porous border separating Afghanistan from Pakistan.

Strangely, no one offers any chai, the sweet green tea that is sipped on almost every occasion in Afghanistan. A man running for local council approaches and introduces himself. Everyone else is quiet. There's a slight breeze. Despite the awkwardness, the soldiers seem calmer than when they first arrived. "This place is actually nice," Lt. Frederick Waage, Dog Company's executive officer, said.

Kunar is a remote province cross cut by the Hindu Kush mountains and narrow river valleys. It borders Pakistan to the east, and is ringed from north to south by the provinces of Nuristan, Laghman and Nangahar. Nine-tenths of the province is so mountainous that donkeys still provide better transportation than cars to the remote villages where the vast majority of the people live -- making the population both difficult to govern and, in the case of insurgents, extremely difficult to find.

The province has been a guerilla battleground since before the Soviets invaded. The battle of Gandamak, which decimated retreating British forces in the mid-19th century, took place in neighboring Nangahar province. The Pashtun Safi and Mamoond tribes are known for their warlike independence, a distrust of outsiders and honor codes dating back to pre-Islamic times. Up in the mountains they follow the ancient Afghan code of Pashtunwali, called the Law of the Five Elders in Kunar -- an oligarchy of tribal leaders whose decisions encompass everything from security to inter-marrying.

The Afghan federal government has virtually no presence among the mountain people. They move across the border with Pakistan, known as the Durand line, at will. Even the Taliban struggled to control them when they held power. The U.S. military does not venture very far into the mountains on patrols anymore. They've tired of men acting as farmers when they scale the mountain and shooting at them as they descend. The military's new counterinsurgency strategy focuses on the population centers, which in this area of Kunar amounts to the larger villages down in the valley. There are few outside influences; maybe a radio station from Pakistan or Jalalabad in addition to the decrees from their mullahs. The Taliban are everywhere, but blend in with the population. You won't find the average Afghan admitting to ever having seen one.

Compounding the daily game of cat and mouse is an extensive criminal trade in smuggled lumber. Kunar and Nuristan are Afghanistan's most densely forested provinces. These forests are now rapidly being cut down and smuggled into Pakistan. When Dog Company soldiers arrived seven months ago, they were told that one of their mandates was to interdict wood smuggling, as the illicit profits help fund the insurgents and corrupt politicians. According to some of the soldiers, the further Dog Company pushed into the mountain villages, the more smuggled logs they uncovered. The soldiers reported that when they stopped these wood shipments, the trucks were accompanied by the Afghan National Police. When the officers called the district sub-governor, he always approved the lumber's movement.

But Dog Company's immediate concern that August day was the national election. It was three days away. The Taliban had threatened spectacular attacks. The fighting in southern Kunar had been heating up. Haji Jan Dad promised he could get the elders to cool things down. The elders have a varying degree of authority over the Taliban fighters. Some of them are known to be Taliban leaders themselves. The mixture of interconnecting local tribes, warlords and Islamist foreign fighters who make up the insurgency in Kunar is not easy to define.

"I've seen at least three faces on our wanted list," one soldier whispered across his shoulder.

If there was exhilaration at being face to face with men they'd only seen in classified reports, there was also a feeing they were being stalled. Reduced to onlookers, the soldiers watched a handful of decision makers from deep in the mountains proceed towards the adjacent mosque, where the real meeting was taking place.

"Oz" -- a big, easy-going, California-bred interpreter -- went with them. Oz's family comes from a conservative part of Jalalabad; he has been in Kunar for almost four years, and by his own admission is a difference-maker in reaching out to the tribes. Even though Oz works for the Americans, he is seen as a sort of cultural bridge, and he was invited to the inner shura in the mosque. First they told him to take his boots off.

"Those boots have innocent blood on them," one elder said.

"Make sure you tell the Americans these are government people," another elder told Oz.

"Yeah right," Oz said, when he returned. "Everyone I was sitting with was fighters. These are people you won't see again."

Haji Jan Dad appeared on the terrace. More than 70 years old, he wore rough clothes, had a gray beard and walked with a slight stoop. But he quickly huddled with the Americans to announce that the elders had agreed not to allow shooting during the elections. That was the cease fire.

To ensure it, Haji Jan Dad had negotiated for U.S. forces to pay some 300 of his tribal men about $10 a day to ring the mountaintops around the three district election sites Dog Company was responsible for. Jan Dad also proposed for the 30 or so elders present to receive a kind of consulting fee. Lt. Waage said that something could be worked out.

Jan Dad beamed. He ordered a cow killed and served hot to his guests piled with dishes of rice and flat bread. He asked Lt. Waage to provide ten cases of Pepsi from the base. "And make sure it's cold," he said.

The Afghans watched as the Americans ate on little tables. Before they put on their armor, Dog Company passed out wind-up radios to each of the elders.

"If you all became Muslim, the war would stop," one of the elders told Lt. Waage after he received a radio.

"Tell me how I can study it," Lt. Waage said earnestly.

"You guys might not get to see anything," Lt. Waage said, meaning he was hopeful the cease fire would hold for the three days until the election. The shura felt like the most important of their seven-month deployment so far, he said.

James Foley is a freelance journalist; earlier this year, he embedded with the U.S. military in Afghanistan's Nuristan, Nangahar and Kunar provinces. Foley reported from Iraq in 2008. The Majlis will publish the second installment of his report on Saturday.