A report, by the Costs of War project at Brown University in
the American state of Rhode Island reveals that around 4.5 million people have
been killed due to the US-led military adventurism in Afghanistan, Iraq,
Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia.
According to the research, the operations have indirectly
killed millions more due to destruction of economies, public services,
infrastructure, and the environment, which adds to the death toll long after
bombs are dropped and increases over time.
Many long-term and under-appreciated consequences of war
that was need to be studied in more detail.
The research indicates that the direct war fatalities or killing
of nearly one million people is an undercount “precise mortality figure remains
unknown”.
The estimates of war deaths in Iraq have been particularly
controversial. A 2006 article in The Lancet estimated that approximately
600,000 Iraqis had died due to war violence between 2003 and 2006.
The controversy over the conflicting reports on the death
toll in Iraq stems from news outlets that are opposed to the war, who
overplayed the death toll, while those who supported the illegal invasion
downplayed the death toll.
There have been various unbiased studies that concluded more
than one million Iraqis have been killed as a result of the US invasion and
occupation of Iraq from 2003 to 2011.
The Iraqi deaths can be considered an undercount because of
almost daily bombings that killed hundreds of Iraqis. Add to the era of the US
and Daesh from 2014 to 2017 where hundreds of thousands of others were
slaughtered and it’s not difficult to imagine more than one million Iraqis have
died and continue to die today as a result of the US war on terror.
There
is little doubt that the US has brought nothing but insecurity and instability
to West Asia, with its military presence. In January 2018, the Leader of Iran's
Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said,
"America's
corrupting presence in this region should end… In this region, they brought
war, discord, sedition, destruction, destruction of
infrastructure. Of course, wherever they stepped in the world, they
acted the same way... this must end."
The report put special emphasis on the effects of US wars on
women and children who suffer the brunt of these ongoing impacts the most.
The report notes that while people were killed in fighting,
far more, especially children, have been killed by the reverberating effects of
US wars, such as the spread of disease and damage to public services.
"More studies are necessary on the impact of war’s
destruction of public services, especially beyond the healthcare system, on
population health," the report says.
"Damage to water and sanitation systems, roads, and
commercial infrastructure such as ports, for instance, have significant but
less understood consequences."
The
research says wars and conflicts which the US has waged or been engaged in
under the pretext of countering terrorism since September 11, 2001 makes clear
that the impacts of war's ongoing violence are so vast and complex that they
are unquantifiable.
It should be noted that after the September 11 attacks, the
US waged wars and sparked conflicts, especially in West Asia under the pretext
of fighting terrorism. However, as a result of the US military adventurism,
there has been an extremely sharp rise in terrorist groups that had no presence
in West Asia or countries such as Somalia before Washington’s intervention in
the region.
In other words, war on terror has had the complete opposite
effect of the slogan under which the Pentagon waged a campaign of instability
in West Asia that allowed terrorism to flourish.
Millions of people are still in distress, pain and
traumatized in both current and former warzones, the study says, calling on the
US as well as its allies to alleviate the ongoing losses and suffering of
millions of people and provide the required reparations, though not easy or
cheap. This is something imperative, the report points out.
The report focuses on Afghanistan as an example of how people,
in particular women and children, the most vulnerable in society, are dying
because, despite the US (shambolic) withdrawal, the damage Washington inflicted
on Afghanistan’s vital services, such as the health sector and the damage the
US caused to the country’s sanitation and other infrastructure in the 20 years
of war and occupation means Afghans are still dying today.
"Though in 2021 the United States withdrew military
forces from Afghanistan, officially ending a war that began with its invasion 20
years’ prior, today Afghans are suffering and dying from war-related causes at
higher rates than ever," the report alarmingly points out.
In the case of Somalia for example, US intervention and the
war that followed has prevented the delivery of humanitarian aid, which the
research says exacerbated famine; this is a natural disaster that could have
been alleviated if the US instead chose to spend a vast amount of money in
humanitarian assistance programs and not radicalizing the local population (and
increasing terrorism and bloodshed) by bombing civilians with drones in the
sky.
Critics
argue that if the United States had not waged war against countries in West
Asia or provoked conflicts in the region, then other parties would not have
engaged in any combat missions. In this case, the US must be solely held responsible
for the disturbing direct and indirect death toll as a result of its
provocative and illegal military measures.
