MIAN POSHTEH, Afghanistan - The young Taliban prisoner was led blindfolded to a sweltering military tent, seated among 17 village elders and then, eyes uncovered, faced a chief accuser brandishing a document with the elders’ signatures or thumbprints.

Captain Scott A. Cuomo, a United States Marine commander who was acting as the prosecutor, told the prisoner: “This letter right here is a sworn pledge from all of your elders that they’re vouching for you and that you will never support the Taliban or fight for the Taliban ever again.”

After a half-hour “trial,” the captain rendered the group’s judgment on the silent prisoner, Juma Khan, 23, whom the Marines had seized after finding a bomb trigger device, ammunition and opium buried in his yard. Mr. Khan’s father and grandfather, who was one of the elders, were among the group. “So on behalf of peace, your family, your grandfather,” Captain Cuomo solemnly said, “we’re going to let you go.”

Thus was justice dispensed on a recent Saturday evening, deep in the Taliban heartland of the Helmand River Valley, where the theory behind the American effort to “reintegrate” the enemy meets the ambiguous reality of a nearly decade-old war.

Captain Cuomo, a 32-year-old Annapolis graduate from Long Island who is not related to the New York political family, acknowledged the hazards of the trial and others like it unfolding in Afghanistan. “Do I know that Juma Khan is not going to turn back around and be the Taliban?” he said. “No.” Nonetheless the effort is proceeding.

Even as Washington and Kabul debate their plans to reconcile with senior members of the Taliban, military commanders on the ground in Afghanistan are reintegrating insurgent foot soldiers on their own. The reason is simple, Captain Cuomo said: While Marines are “trained to fight, and we don’t mind fighting, the problem with fighting is that it doesn’t bring stability to your home.”

Six days after Mr. Khan’s May 1 release, another Marine commander, Captain Jason C. Brezler, got pledges from 25 former insurgents to sign up as police recruits in the northern Helmand village of Soorkano. A week later in Marja, where clashes between the Marines and the Taliban continue in the wake of an American offensive there in February, Lieutenant Colonel Brian Christmas released two young men who admitted to fighting for the Taliban, after the pair and two elders signed pledges promising the men would not fight again.

Acting under military guidelines aimed at persuading low-level fighters to lay down their arms, commanders repeat the mantra that the United States will never kill its way to victory in Afghanistan. They say that in a counterinsurgency war intended to winover the population, reintegration is crucial because the Taliban are woven so deeply into the social fabric of the country.

“I can understand why they’re Taliban,” Captain Cuomo said in an interview after Mr. Khan’s release. “Well of course they are, what do you want them to do? I want to do anything, I had to be part of the Taliban, man.”

Military officials describe reintegration so far as sporadic at best, an interim effort ahead of a more formal process that they hope the Afghan government will adopt at a political summit meeting in Kabul in coming weeks.

Last year, as part of an earlier Afghan push to give jobs to defecting Taliban, the Kabul government said that at least 9,000 insurgents had turned in their weapons. Major General Richard Barrons, a British Army commander in Kabul who has helped oversee the reconciliation effort, said the Afghan government now estimated that there were 40,000 fighters to be brought back into the fold, with the 1,000 at the top, including the Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, as the most important. United States military officials say they do not have a clear idea of how many Taliban have reintegrated so far, including any who came into the fold during the early years of the war, but that the numbers are small.

But what is preventing Mr. Khan from rejoining the Taliban? The Marines say the village elders who vouched for him will help keep him in check, as will a parole-like program. The Marines will meet with him regularly and pump him for information about his friends. They also expect him to be employed in a canal cleanup project this summer.

“If they realize at some point that the cause they think they’re fighting for is not a worthy one, and we’re here to bring stability to the area, then you have to make an overture,” Captain Cuomo said, then paused before asking: “Will it bite you in the butt?”

He did not directly answer.


By ELISABETH BUMILLER


LYNSEY ADDARIO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Marines led Juma Khan to a ‘‘trial’’ in which elders promised he would ‘‘never support the Taliban or fight for the Taliban ever again.’’