The war in Afghanistan has cost over $2 trillion, and killed over 2,400 US soldiers and 38,000 Afghan civilians. Now 18 years on, it has failed to achieve its goal of creating a stable and democratic country that’s free from the influence of radical Islam, evident in Afghanistan’s dysfunctional politics, slow-burn civil war, and the recent rise of Islamic State. Quite the contrary, it has helped to destroy the aura of invincibility that characterized the United States’ ‘unipolar moment,’ and underscored the fallacy of nation-building as a foreign policy concept.

Will 2020 be the year the war finally comes to an end?

The situation on the ground is as bad as it has ever been since the war started…

Such statements have become a grim fixture in media coverage on Afghanistan over the past decade.

The Taliban now controls or contests considerably more territory than the Afghan government. In fact, as of May of this year the US government has stopped quantifying just how much territory the Taliban controls, citing the information’s “limited decision-making value.” The decision follows similar moves to restrict data on casualty levels in the Afghan security forces and classify assessments of the performance of state security forces. Though US officials justify these new restrictions by saying they will limit the deleterious impact on troop and government morale in Afghanistan, it’s more likely that the US public is the intended target, as voters have long since tired of the conflict and are increasingly opposed to perpetuating it.

Violence is an everyday feature of life in Afghanistan, stymying economic activity and fueling discontent with NATO and, by association, the government it supports in Kabul. A list of deadly incidents in any given month reveals how this is a civil war that never really ended. Violence has been trending up as well. 2018 saw an 11% increase from the year before, with 3,804 civilians killed – 927 of them children – and 7,189 wounded.

Reconstruction efforts have floundered despite some $30 billion of US taxpayer dollars being funneled into rebuilding the country. According to a report from the special inspector general of Afghanistan reconstruction, at least $15.5 billion of this money ended up being wasted, abused, or subject to fraud.