The Washington Post has published the content of a collection of classified government documents stating that senior US officials have been reluctant to provide the true picture of 18 years of war in Afghanistan.

The newspaper said that the American military leaders and diplomats presented a rosy picture of the course of the war, despite knowing the falsehood of their statements, as they concealed evidence confirming the lack of chances of victory in that war.

The documents, which were obtained by the newspaper, also included testimonies of hundreds of American officials criticizing what is happening in Afghanistan and how their country sank in that war.

They pointed out the main deficiencies in the war that continues today - as they emphasized - that Presidents George Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, and their military leaders; did not fulfill their promises to win the war in Afghanistan.

The newspaper obtained these documents under the US Freedom of Information Act and two other federal laws.

Taliban control
The disclosure of these documents comes at a time when Trump and the Pentagon are seeking to reduce the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan, with the aim of increasing focus on fighting al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, and the US administration wants to reach a peace agreement with the Taliban.

The newspaper stated that General Douglas Lute, who was assigned by the former US President George W. Bush a pivotal role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said in 2015, "We were far from understanding the real (situation) in Afghanistan, we did not know what to do."

And military leaders have throughout the years of the war expressed their hopes that the conflict in Afghanistan will calm down, although the Taliban still control vast swathes of land there, and kill American and Afghan soldiers without having any airpower capabilities.

In 2010, former General Michael Flynn, who was deputy chief of staff for intelligence affairs in Afghanistan, strongly criticized the work of US intelligence agencies in this country, describing them as ignorant and far from the Afghan people.

Over 2,400 American soldiers were killed in the Afghan conflict, while thousands more were injured.