Fahim: Tracking casualties among Afghan forces and civilians is incredibly difficult. Right now, The Times is the only organization that tracks both (the United Nations monitors civilian casualties). For me, it was an important issue because I thought there should be a record of those dying in this war — something we haven’t had in the past. Only in November 2018 did the Afghan government acknowledge that more than 28,000 Afghan police officers and soldiers had been killed since 2015.

Every week, our team of five reporters and stringers in Afghanistan collects tips and stories from social and local media of security incidents. To verify them, we first call the provincial police or provincial governor’s office for details. If we aren’t getting consistent information, we also reach out to hospitals, provincial councils and so on. The casualty reports also include claims of Taliban casualties, but it’s impossible for us to independently verify those claims. Taliban officials do not give out their own death tolls, or do not do so credibly, while on the government side, many officials give out inflated numbers.

Fatima: Sometimes it is a lot of work to verify a single incident. When the Taliban spokesman claims that there was an attack, I call my colleagues in the provinces and ask them to check. They go to their sources. Sometimes it takes 10 calls to get one confirmation.

Fahim: The province with the greatest number of casualties we’ve verified is Kunduz, in the north, where there were more than 405 deaths over the past year, followed by Badghis, in the northwest, and Farah, in the west along the border with Iran. Kunduz has been a hot spot for years, but before 2016 the other two provinces did not see a lot of Taliban activity. With the Taliban and the Americans in peace negotiations for much of the past year, it felt like the Taliban was trying to demonstrate its reach by targeting regions historically controlled by the Afghan government.