Their company, with the 205th Afghan Army Corps, was based in the Panjwai district of Kandahar Province. In May, they were sent to a village near Zangabad, the site of a popular anti-Taliban uprising in March that American and Afghan officials had hailed as turning a corner in an area long dominated by the militants. Just two months later, though, the insurgents were back.

According to the wounded soldiers’ accounts, later confirmed by their company commander, they found the area heavily mined and booby-trapped. When the soldiers began tripping mines, Taliban gunmen attacked, using tunnels through walls between adjoining homes in the village to hit and run.

“No one came to our aid and did anything,” said Lt. Masiullah Hamdard, who lost both legs and his left arm in the fight and was still twisting in pain from his injuries. He said that two American helicopters and a jet were circling above the battle. “We kept begging them to shoot up the place but they didn’t do anything whatever.”

Indeed, from Tuesday on, that is American policy everywhere in Afghanistan. The American military has decreed that no air support be available to Afghans unless an exception is approved by an officer holding a general’s rank — and already, the anecdotal evidence indicates that such exceptions have been rare.

Instead of close air support, the American military has been providing equipment and training to help the Afghans use mortars and other artillery when they get in trouble, according to Maj. Gen. James C. McConville, the American commander in eastern Afghanistan. “If you do it for them, they will never build the capability and the capacity to do it,” he said. “We don’t want them to get used to a capability they’re not going to have in the future.”