We had a reporter inside Ghazni, canvassing neighborhoods. Although the country’s cellphone networks failed in Ghazni, making it hard to check the official narrative, we also found people who could get a cell signal on the outskirts or upper floors of Ghazni buildings, or who fled and brought their stories to us.

One of our reporters, Fahim Abed, got through on the phone to the director of Ghazni Hospital, Baz Mohammad Hemat, who spoke from a hospital floor awash in blood, bodies stacked in storerooms because the morgue was full. Dr. Hemat counted 113 dead on day two, and more arriving hourly. Most were in uniform, belying official claims of minimal casualties.

In Ajristan District, our Afghan reporters heard that disaster had befallen an elite Army commando unit defending that remote area. As our reporter Jawad Sukhanyar called around to officials in the surrounding areas, he found that the Ministry of Defense was doing the same thing; they didn’t know what had happened either.

It turned out that insurgent suicide bombers destroyed the commando company’s base, and as the defenders fled, Taliban fighters picked them off. Out of a base force of more than 100 commandos, police and militia fighters, only 22 survived, fleeing into the desert with no water or food.

Jawad reached a surviving commando, Sgt. Eid Mohammad, 30, on the phone. He described how they had drunk one another’s urine while fleeing pro-Taliban Kuchi nomads.

The sergeant also repeated a version of something widely heard in the 25 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces actively at war now: “No one from the government gave us anything. All we got was promises, no action.”

That was true 300 miles north of Ghazni, at a place called Chinese Camp, where an Afghan Army company struggled through three days of heavy Taliban attacks, begging for resupply and reinforcements, and especially air support, which were promised, but never arrived.

Our reporter Najim Rahim had been on the phone every day for a week with the defenders, including their captain, who had become Najim’s friend. On Sunday someone else answered the captain’s phone. “I started crying when I heard he was killed,” Najim said.

By Tuesday the defenders at Chinese Camp were almost out of ammunition, they told Najim. Half were dead or wounded and the rest surrendered except for a lieutenant who escaped. Najim managed to track him down, so we knew what had happened.