In Laghman, the governor, Mohammed Iqbal Azizi, said the government had given mostly food and ammunition to the fighters, but only relatively small quantities of ammunition.

The man bearing the government’s standard in the Ghazni uprising is Asadullah Khalid, the minister of tribal and border affairs, a confidant of President Hamid Karzai’s, a Ghazni native as well as a former governor of the province. Although he is a charismatic, implacable foe of the Taliban, locals in Ghazni say they have mixed feelings about his involvement, and many see him as corrupt. He was dismissed in 2008 from his position as Kandahar governor after allegations of corruption and human-rights abuses.

“I am leading this in part because I am a son of Ghazni, and because I am a minister of tribal affairs and there are tribes living in Ghazni,” Mr. Khalid said during a recent interview in his Kabul office. “Ghazni and the south of Afghanistan are burning in the same fire — you cannot talk with the Taliban, you have to be their slave or fight with them.”

He has brought both government money and local allies into the Ghazni fight. But there has been controversy, too: at least three commanders and several local officials say that he has distributed large amounts of cash — perhaps as much as $200,000, they say — to just a few close allies, and very little has made it to individual fighters.

“We have heard many complaints from local uprising commanders that thousands of dollars have come from the minister of tribal and border affairs, but the commanders are only receiving 4,000 Pakistani rupees” — roughly $42 — “for each fighter,” said Sher Khan, the district governor of Andar in Ghazni Province.

Mr. Khalid denies those accusations. “I wish I had $200,000, but all we could do was help some of the martyrs’ families,” he said.

Locals also complained about the men Mr. Khalid had brought to run the uprising, who, while from Ghazni, were not part of the early days of fighting. They said that the National Directorate of Security was involved in supplying money and ammunition — and that suspicion has brought concerns that the United States, which helps support the N.D.S., may be getting involved, too.