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NEW YORK With the Syria crisis dominating headlines, few are paying attention to Americas longest war. In fact, the war in Afghanistan has hardly been mentioned in the early months of U.S. President Donald Trumps administration, despite the presence of two experienced military officers Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster in key positions. This must change.

After 15 years of failed intervention, the situation in Afghanistan is out of control. The unity government that emerged after the contested presidential election of 2014 is dysfunctional, and security conditions are rapidly deteriorating. Meanwhile, opium production is surging and Afghanistan now ranks second in the world in money laundering (after Iran). In Europe and elsewhere, inflows of Afghan refugees continue unabated.

The war in Afghanistan has exacted enormous costs. So far, fatalities include roughly 3,500 coalition soldiers (some 70 percent of which were U.S. troops), about the same number of contractors, and some 100,000 Afghans (including security forces, opposition fighters and civilians). Since 2002, the U.S. has spent over $780 billion on the war roughly equivalent to the entire U.S. foreign-affairs budget for more than two decades. Additional non-budgetary expenditure, including disability payments and compensation to the families of fallen soldiers, will add hundreds of billions more to the wars total cost.

The war in Afghanistan was supposed to be over a long time ago. After all, U.S. troops did not enter the country to reconstruct it or create a democracy. But a series of missteps misguided civilian policies and misplaced priorities on the part of the government and its donors have boosted recruitment for the very groups the U.S. is supposed to be quelling, including al-Qaida, the Afghan Taliban and, more recently, the Islamic State.

The nation-building and counterinsurgency strategy that accompanied U.S. President Barack Obamas troop surge in 2010 was meant to turn the war around. Instead, as U.S. and allied troops left areas that had supposedly been cleared, the Taliban and other extremist groups soon returned.

The 43 percent increase in opium production in just the last year both reflects and reinforces the growing strength of these groups, which use drug-trafficking revenues to finance their operations.

Of global annual flows of 430-450 tons of heroin and morphine, about 380 tons are produced with Afghan opium.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan has been allowed to fall into an aid trap. The U.S. has disbursed about $110 billion for Afghan reconstruction. (Adjusted for inflation, that is equivalent to the $12.5 billion cost of the Marshall Plan for reconstruction in Europe after World War II.) Roughly $70 billion of those funds went to creating and financing Afghan security forces, and $40 billion went to non-military expenditure.

Yet, despite all that spending, Afghanistan will be unable to stand on its own feet for decades to come. The countrys cumulative GDP from 2002 to 2015 was only $170 billion; GDP in 2016 totaled just $17 billion, or $525 per capita. Non-military aid from the U.S. and others has amounted to 50 percent of GDP, on average, every year since 2002. And that aid has consistently been delivered in the same inefficient ways, even as the U.S Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) and others have repeatedly highlighted enormous amounts of waste, fraud and abuse.

As the Trump administration alters U.S. foreign policy priorities, devising a more effective strategy for Americas Afghan operations must be a priority. Only after such a strategy is in place should the administration meet the militarys requests to send more troops.

Fortunately, both Mattis and McMaster know that simply throwing more troops and more money at Afghanistan wont do the job. Indeed, both have emphasized the need to support counterinsurgency operations with effective policies that do not create new enemies and fuel the need for more ammunition. Retired high-level officers from all branches of the U.S. Armed Forces have taken this logic a step further, telling congressional leaders that combating terrorism requires addressing its causes, such as lack of opportunity, insecurity, injustice and hopelessness.

To create more cost-effective, integrated and inclusive policies that benefit most Afghans, not just the privileged few, U.S. leaders will need to engage in some radical rethinking. Various proposals are on the table, including one of my own: to create synergistic reconstruction zones (RZs) one aimed at local production and another aimed at exports that support economic recovery.

Such RZs can help the resource-rich Afghanistan to replace aid with foreign direct investment and export revenues. Foreign investors would work in support of local communities, enabling them to produce food and services for local consumption, rather than displacing them, as is so often the case. In exchange, the communities would protect the RZs, so that investors can produce for export at a lower security risk.

After 15 years of conflict, ending the war in Afghanistan may seem to have lost some of its urgency. But the truth is that it is more urgent than ever, not just to check the flows of refugees to Europe and elsewhere, but also to undermine terrorist recruitment efforts. By promoting impact investment by those seeking both economic gain and social progress, and by advancing projects that benefit foreign investors and local communities alike, the Trump administration may be able to do just that.

Graciana del Castillo, author of Guilty Party: The International Community in Afghanistan is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Project Syndicate, 2017

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A fresh look at the long war in Afghanistan - The Japan Times

Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance is committed to helping Afghanistan in order to help Afghan forces.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said that recent attacks in Afghanistan have claimed the lives of many people which indicates the situation in the country is extremely complicated.

He said that the NATO alliance is committed to continuing its partnership with Afghanistan in order to help the Afghan security forces.

We should not step back, because the situation in Afghanistan is difficult, we have seen horrendous attacks and many civilians killed, he said.

Meanwhile, President Ashraf Ghani has said the key to peace in Afghanistan is to undertake systematic reforms in the security institutions particularly reforms in the Ministry of Interior (MoI).

The important issue for security strategy is whether we are successful in bringing reforms in the ministry of interior; the ministry of defense has already started its work on reforms. Over the past six months, we took serious decisions to improve the leadership and decrease corruption, said Ghani.

It is believed that weakness among the leaders of security institutions and the lack of equipment were still among the key challenges facing the Afghan security forces.

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Recent Attacks in Afghanistan Show Complex Situation: NATO Chief - TOLOnews

KABUL, Afghanistan Abortion, birth control, breast-cancer checkups and Tinder dating aren't topics one typically finds in Afghan media. But a small group of Kabul University students have changed that with the launch of a monthly women's magazine, Gellara.

"There are many taboos being talked about," publisher Sanjar Sohail told Fox News. "It is really revolutionary work in Afghanistan. In a time when we havewarlords like Hekmatyarcoming back, young women are making sure that they send a clear message to the world: We are only moving forward."

Pages in the first edition of Gellara magazine (Hollie McKay/Fox News)

The idea for Gellara was born five months ago out of a female students book club at Kabul University, in which several members decided it was time to take some of their ideas to a broader audience.

Since then, 12 women, ages 19 to 22, have volunteered their time to ensure their controversial first edition hit the stands.

Pages in the first edition of Gellara magazine ( Hollie McKay/Fox News)

The fashion/lifestyle magazine was thus launched late last month, complete with a swanky soire in Kabul attended by local influencers, including advisers to First Lady Rula Ghani. Its initial print run was 2,000 copies, each selling for the equivalent of $1.50, available in Kabul at bookstores, universities, travel agencies and beauty parlors.

Pages in the first edition of Gellara magazine (Hollie McKay/Fox News)

Already business is booming.

"Bookstores are calling, asking for hundreds more copies," Sohail said. "And we are getting calls of interest to sell in much more conservative provinces like Kandahar, Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif."

AFGHANISTAN'S FEMALE POLICE: PORTRAITS OF COURAGE, PATRIOTISM DESPITE GRIEF

AFGHANISTAN WOMENS PLEAS TO US: DO NOT FORGET WE ARE HERE

Gellara's editor-in-chief, Fatana Hassanzada, 23, hopes Gellara will encourage the upcoming generation of women in an era of uncertainty and a steadily deteriorating security.

Fatana Hassanzada, editor-in-chief of Gellara ( Hollie McKay/Fox News)

"Life in Afghanistan is ugly. Everything from politics to violence feeds us with disappointments," she noted bluntly. "Gellara is here to bring hope and to counter the ugly face of life with color, beauty and new lifestyle with the women in the center of its focus."

The majority of the images inside -- as well as the cover shot -- also feature female models not only without their traditional hijab head covering, but donning mini-skirts, sleeveless tops and an amount of exposed skin more akin to a fashion spread in a Western magazine for women.

Pages in the first edition of Gellara magazine (Hollie McKay/Fox News)

But breaking cultural anathemas doesn't come without risk in an Islamic country still steeped in tradition.

The cover shoot featuring famed Afghan model and singer Mozhdah Jamalzadah took place in Dubai as a safety precaution. But for her, the pros outweigh the cons.

Pages in the first edition of Gellara magazine (Hollie McKay/Fox News)

"The women's magazine is another huge step in furthering the progress of women's rights in Afghanistan," she told Fox News.

And although the magazine managed to acquire a vast array of advertisers from dental clinics and photo studios to loan companies and restaurants, they too had their own reservations, Sohail pointed out.

However, the young women remain steadfast as they sit over editorial meetings with their U.S. edition copies of Cosmopolitan magazine, which many credit as their model. As illuminated in an article in their own first publication, they remind one another that all societies -- including America -- have endured long struggles to change the public's acceptance of women's evolving roles.

Yet Cosmo wasn't the only model for the ambitious creators. They chose to give their magazine a Kurdish name in a tribute to a group of women Gellaras creators admire.

"It refers to the part of the eye that sees the beauty," Sohail added. "They really wanted to honor the Kurdish women fighting ISIS. That has been the real inspiration."

Hollie McKay has been a FoxNews.com staff reporter since 2007. She has reported extensively from the Middle East on the rise and fall of terrorist groups such as ISIS in Iraq. Follow her on twitter at @holliesmckay

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Afghanistan gets Cosmo-inspired women's magazine - Fox News

To a generation of younger Americans, waging the War in Afghanistan must seem like one of the things our government does as a matter of course, like collecting taxes or distributing Social Security payments. The vast majority of students graduating from high school this spring have no memory of a time when we weren't fighting in that far away country. And soon enough, some number of them will likely arrive there to continue the campaign.

Donald Trump, in one of his occasional peacenik fits on the campaign trail, expressed enthusiasm for ending the war. Now that he's in office, however, he's mulling another surge of troops to support the beleaguered and hopelessly corrupt government we helped install in Kabul.

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The reasons why we should risk more American lives and spend more taxpayer money on such an adventure are, at best, unclear. The arguments for why we shouldn't, on the other hand, are quite obvious.

The first argument is that nobody knows what victory in Afghanistan would even look like. We originally invaded the country in order to remove the Taliban government, which at the time controlled most of the country and provided a safe haven to Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.

Bin Laden is thankfully dead, but Al-Qaeda has moved on to establish safe havens elsewhere, and the Taliban now controls more territory in Afghanistan than at any point before the invasion. ISIS is getting in on the action, too, having claimed a stretch of land along the porous Pakistani border.

Progress is being made, in other words, but not by us. Trump's generals hope he will send an additional 3,000 to 5,000 troops to the country to help remedy the situation. To put that number in perspective, we currently have about 8,400 troops there, down from 100,000 in President Obama's first term.

How such a modest surge would do much to defeat the Taliban, or bring them to the negotiating table, is anyone's guess. Far and away the most likely scenario is that it just prolongs the current stalemate, which at this point seems to be America's only real goal in the country. Defeat may be inevitable, but can be prolonged indefinitely.

Perhaps defeat is too strong a word, because America doesn't lose wars anymore, so much as we just don't win them. Since the end of World War II, we've waged a number of them, but had only one or two clear-cut victories: the 1983 toppling of a Cuban-sponsored junta in Grenada, and perhaps the emancipation of Kosovo from Serbian rule via a brief bombing campaign.

Why is that? Well, it's not for lack of cash. Despite the frequent Republican lament that our military is somehow hobbled by budget cuts, we still spend more on our armed forces than Russia, China, France, India, Great Britain, Israel, Australia, South Korea, Brazil, Iran, Spain, Canada, and Turkey combined.

Proponents of such expenditures often note that this allows the U.S. to garrison its forces worldwide, from Europe to Africa to Asia. That's nice, but you'd think, for all that money spent, we could decisively vanquish enemies like we did when we were a poorer, weaker country. Defense spending gobbles up roughly half of our discretionary budget, so if we're not in the business of winning wars outright anymore, perhaps we should wage fewer of them and spend more of that money on other things.

The rejoinder here is that modern wars can't always be fought to decisive conclusions, but are still worthwhile. The world wars were big conflicts, which we now avoid in part by constantly fighting small ones. If no entity is in a position to pose any kind of real, existential threat to the United States, then the little wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and the rest are a small price to pay.

In reality, the price is quite large. Thousands of Americans have died in our post-9/11 wars, along with hundreds of thousands of the foreign civilians we set out to liberate. In a pure dollar amount, we've sunk more into Afghan reconstruction that we did to rebuild Western Europe after World War II.

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The Pentagon says two Army Rangers who were killed during a raid in Afghanistan might have died from friendly fire. The soldiers were targeting t...

For all that, Afghanistan remains a backwards, largely illiterate, and essentially feudal society of competing tribes and Islamist militants with no real central government. Setting up some kind of stable democratic government in Afghanistan was always a transparently fantastical notion, but for all the money spent, it stands to reason that we should expect a little more by way of results.

Yet Afghanistan remains a sideshow, one only rarely talked about on the campaign trail in 2016. The public's focus has long since moved on to other calamities. We've reduced the longest running war in our history to background noise.

This makes sense, to a certain extent, because why would we bother ourselves with a problem with no solution? Leaving now would be traumatic for the national psyche. This is the war we waged to avenge the greatest attack ever launched against us; how can we admit to ourselves that that fight is ending in what could be charitably called a draw?

The other option a seemingly endless war in a place of limited strategic interest -- is not much better, and in many ways far worse. In a 2015 interview, then-candidate Trump once famously called the war a "mistake." Tellingly, it's one of the few statements he felt compelled to retract under political pressure. Say what you will about women and POWs, Mr. Trump, but never call the Afghan War a mistake.

In that same interview, Mr. Trump asked how long Washington expected American forces to remain in Afghanistan: "Are they going to be there for the next 200 years? You know, at some point, what's going on?"

This is still a pressing question. And now that he's president, he has the opportunity to provide us with an answer.

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Commentary: Why are we still in Afghanistan? - CBS News

The moment you step outside the airport in Kabul, the first thing that strikes you are the roses. They are everywhere lining the dusty motorway into town, clustering in flowerbeds in traffic circles, blooming in private gardens.

The second thing you see is fear. Foreigners hide behind their sandbagged walls, barbed wire, armed guards and bulletproof vehicles. But many locals are terrified too, including those who fled the country but were recently returned against their will.

There is every reason to be afraid. The fragile government struggles to make headway against the Taliban, which is likely more powerful now than at any time since 2001. Other armed opposition groups including the so-called Islamic State have seized control of parts of the country and carry out devastating attacks even in securitized areas of Kabul and elsewhere.

The first thing that strikes you when you arrive in Kabul are the roses. The second thing you see is the fear

Violent incidents are increasingly frequent. According to the U.N., 2016 was the deadliest year for civilian casualties since its records began in 2009. While my Amnesty International colleagues and I were in Kabul in May 2017, a German aid worker and an Afghan guard were killed, and a Finnish woman likely kidnapped, during an attack on a Swedish NGO in the city. Wednesdays horrific bomb attack near the German embassy in central Kabulwhich killed 80 people and injured 350 the vast majority of whom were Afghan civilians shows that rather than winding down, the conflict in Afghanistan is escalating dangerously.

British and American authorities warn their citizens against traveling to Afghanistan, saying it remains unsafe "due to the ongoing risk of kidnapping, hostage taking, military combat operations, landmines, banditry, armed rivalry between political and tribal groups" and "insurgent attacks."

And yet, Western governments have deemed the country safe enough for Afghan asylum-seekers to return. Over the past decade and a half, a number of European countries (as well as Australia) have signed Memoranda of Understanding with Afghanistan, through which the country agrees to readmit its citizens under certain conditions. These types of arrangements are not necessarily unreasonable, but their implementation must conform with international law, which prohibits states from transferring people if there is a risk of serious human rights violations.

Nonetheless, even as the situation in Afghanistan has unmistakably worsened, Western governments have escalated their efforts to return Afghans who fled war and persecution.

At an aid conference in October 2016, under pressure from the European Union, the Afghan government signed the EU-Afghanistan Joint Way Forward, a document that paves the way for the forcible return of an unlimited number of Afghans from Europe. One unnamed Afghan government official called the agreement a poisoned cup the country was forced to accept in return for development aid.

Hundreds of returns have taken place since the agreement was signed six months ago. My colleagues and I recently spoke with Afghans deported from Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. While everyone in Afghanistan is at risk, many of the returned people we spoke to were extremely vulnerable, and their returns likely violated international law.

I feel like Ive fallen from the sky

A young man, whom Ill call Azad, is at serious risk because of his sexual orientation. Afghanistan criminalizes same-sex sexual conduct, and there have been reports of harassment, violence and detention by police. When Azad found out he was going to be deported from a European country, he tried to kill himself and was put under suicide watch until he was forcibly returned.

This was his first time in Kabul, he told me. I have nowhere to go," he said. "Maybe I will join the drug addicts in the west of the city, just to get some shelter.

Despite his young age, Azad has survived a number of tragedies. After fleeing the war in Afghanistan as a child he grew up in Iran, and later lost his mother when the family tried to make its way to Europe. While clearly frightened during our conversation, he broke down completely when speaking about her death. All I want to do is visit her grave.

Another man, Farid, is in danger of religious persecution for converting to Christianity. Like Azad, he left Afghanistan as a child, grew up in Iran, then fled to a European country. He is terrified about what will happen to him in Afghanistan. Still in shock after being wrenched from his adopted country and faith community, he said: I feel like Ive fallen from the sky. I dont believe Im here.

He, too, had never been to Kabul. I dont know anything about Afghanistan," he told me. "Where will I go? I dont have funds to live alone and I cant live with relatives because they will see that I dont pray.

European governments and leaders know Afghanistan is not safe. If they don't stop deporting people like Azad and Farid, they will have blood on their hands

Their stories are, unfortunately, far from exceptional. Some deportees have already suffered violence after being forcibly returned to Afghanistan. An Afghan who returned from Germany in January 2017 was injured in a suicide attack near the Supreme Court just two weeks later, according to a recent report by the Afghan Analysts Network. Several other people including young children were injured in attacks by armed groups in Kabul, a member of the Afghanistan Migrants Advice and Support Organization told us.

None of these people should have been sent back. When they walked out of the airport, the country was probably as unknown to many of them as it was to me and they face far greater risks.

European governments and leaders know Afghanistan is not safe. If they don't stop deporting people like Azad and Farid, they will have blood on their hands.

This article was first published by Politico.

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They fled Afghanistan fearing for their lives but Europe forced them back - Amnesty International