The phrase "a difficult and protracted" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a situation or process that is both challenging and lengthy in duration.
Example: "The negotiations were a difficult and protracted affair, lasting several months before an agreement was finally reached."
Alternatives: "a challenging and lengthy" or "a tough and extended".
British troops are involved, and some dying, in a difficult and protracted war with no end in sight and a recent surge in media and public opinion against it".
But a local property tax dispute may pale next to the bigger challenges faced by Mr. Gamal, 37, a relative novice in the New York real estate world, as he embarks on what is likely to be a difficult and protracted round of fund-raising.
The work of Dr. Omalu, and the effect that Concussion has had in catapulting it to a more immediate presence on the national agenda, is just the first salvo in what will be a difficult and protracted culture war trying to make peace with just another violent contradiction in a country composed of almost nothing but.
He has appealed to the troops fighting around the city to block routes where they can to prevent women being moved to Syria at the end of a battle widely expected to be difficult and protracted, but to end in Isis's defeat.
Paradigm shifts occur slowly; if arriving at a new medical conception of pain has been difficult and protracted, disseminating the knowledge will be more so.
Other officials said it had been "very difficult" and protracted.
People have heard of it, but few know what it is – including GPs, health visitors and paediatricians – making diagnosis difficult and protracted.
That same month he advised cabinet on the budget strategy, stating that it needed to recognise that dealing with the current account issue "is going to be both difficult and protracted".
Coalition talks are usually difficult and protracted in Israel and these have been no exception, the BBC's Yolande Knell in Jerusalem reports.
Military officials, however, continue to make transfers more difficult and protracted than necessary, administration officials said.
