WASHINGTON: Winning the Afghan war depended on getting at least two foreign governments “to play ball,” those of Afghanistan and Pakistan, but the United States failed to do so, says a report released on Monday.

Also, an opinion poll released on Monday, showed that for the first time, the majority of people in the United States view war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan as failures.

A prominent US news outlet, Foreign Policy, identified 10 major mistakes that it claimed caused the United States to fail in Afghanistan.

“The first was the Afghan government itself, which was corrupt, inefficient, and increasingly unwilling to listen to well-intentioned US advice. The second was Pakistan, which continued to play footsie with the Taliban and sometimes put roadblocks (literal ones) in the way of the US military.”

The survey by the Pew Research Centre, Washington, found that, in all, 52 per cent of Americans feel the nation’s military has “mostly failed” in achieving their goals in both embattled nations.

Conversely, less than 40 per cent felt either mission had been successful.

The FP report observed that US leaders never fully appreciated that the war could not be won if they didn't get more cooperation from the two allies, and that they wouldn’t get that support as long as Islamabad and Kabul were convinced that Washington “would never call their bluff.”

The most important cause of America's failure, according to Foreign Policy, was “trying to go alone.”

The reported pointed out that after 9/11, America's Nato allies offered to help the United States go after the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Convinced that the job would be easy and that allies would simply make things harder, the Rumsfeld Pentagon responded with a brusque “No, thanks.”