TEHRAN - A scathing report that indicts the U.S. government for its failure in Afghanistan despite 17 years of war and investment worth billions of dollars has blasted Trump administration for misleading the people of America on facts about war in Afghanistan.

The U.S. government was misleading its public to justify the 17-year-old war in Afghanistan, routinely using inflated data to justify its stay in the war-ravaged country, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

The report comes amid the upsurge in violence and civilian casualties across the war-ravaged country. According to the United Nations, civilian deaths touched record high in the first half of this year, putting a big question mark on America's longest war in its history.

The NYT report compares the US government’s data with those provided by various international aid agencies and with NYT’s own research and concludes that Washington does not want Americans to know the real situation in Afghanistan.

While the U.S. government says the Taliban control or contest 44 per cent of districts in Afghanistan, the NYT report claims that the insurgents actually control or contest about 61pc area.

“The war has become more expensive, in current dollars, than the Marshall Plan, which helped to rebuild Europe after World War II,” the report claims.

The report also disputes the U.S. military’s claim that the Afghan government effectively “controls or influences” 56pc of the country, saying that in many districts, the Afghan government controls only the district headquarters and military barracks, while the Taliban control the rest.