MOHAMMAD RAHIM, Afghanistan — The men of an Afghan village have emerged from their fortress homes, safe for the first time in 30 years after the end of a blood feud, which had claimed more than 300 lives.

The settlement of Mohammad Rahim is celebrating the end of a war that many believe, though few actually remember, began for age-old reasons — “Zan, zar, zemin,” or women, gold, land. For three decades it ran unchecked and confined the male population to their homes, which were quickly turned into fortresses with bricked-up windows and gun loopholes in the walls.

The locals say that even the Taliban took one look at the chaos and went elsewhere.

“It started over Sambola’s widow,” the leader of one of the sides, Malik Abdul Wahab, said.

“Ashmir Khan was supposed to marry her. But Haji Nasruddin Khan married her instead. Ashmir shot Nasruddin and that is how it began.”

The fighting split Mohammad Rahim along clan lines, involved the entire population, and spilled into neighboring Weygel. A total of 318 men were killed in the fighting, which involved 160 families.

The situation inverted the norms of Afghan society as only women, protected from harm under Pashtunwali, the Afghan code of conduct, were able to continue the running of the village. As their menfolk traded fire from the houses and alleyways above, they toiled in the fields together without incident.

“Sometimes they shot us, sometimes we would go and attack them. Sometimes it was 12 hours,” Mr. Wahab, stroking a foot-long beard and shaking his head, said.

Doulat Beg, 32, a member of the opposing clan, recalled: “In order to leave the village you had to wait until midnight or later and then creep away in the dark. And sometimes they would have ambushes for you.” He lost two nephews, three cousins and one uncle to the fighting.

Then abruptly, at the end of May, the governor of Nangahar province, Gul Agha Sherzai, stomped in and announced the fighting must end.

Mr. Sherzai called a jirga, or council session of elders, to end the madness.

“The problem was that for the last 30 years the government was very weak,” said Mr. Wahab, neatly spearing the major problems that continues to beset rural Afghanistan. “No outsiders ever came to negotiate an end to our dispute.” Without the intervention, locals say that Afghan male pride would have kept the fighting going into infinity.