AFTER MORE than 17 years, it is the longest war in American history. American forces are no closer to defeating the Taliban-the repressive Islamist militia that ruled most of Afghanistan before 2001-than they were a decade ago. In fact, the share of the country under full control of the elected, American-backed government is humiliatingly small. The conflict has reached something close to a stalemate, but a bloody one: some 10,000 police and soldiers, 3,400 civilians and an unknown number of insurgents died in 2017 alone. Since then, the authorities have stopped releasing data on military casualties-not, presumably, because things have got better.
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