{"id":174757,"date":"2020-12-14T12:00:19","date_gmt":"2020-12-14T12:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=174757"},"modified":"2020-12-10T06:29:49","modified_gmt":"2020-12-10T06:29:49","slug":"the-u-s-war-on-terror-has-displaced-37-million-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/12\/the-u-s-war-on-terror-has-displaced-37-million-people\/","title":{"rendered":"The U.S. \u2018War on Terror\u2019 Has Displaced 37 Million People"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s why we used the numbers we did \u2014 and what they can and can\u2019t tell us.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

5 Dec 2020 – <\/em>Over the last week, considerable debate arose around a calculation I helped produce showing that the wars the U.S. government has fought since the attacks of September 11, 2001, have forced at least 37 million people \u2014 and perhaps as many as 59 million \u2014 to flee their homes.<\/p>\n

As a co-author of the underlying\u00a0report<\/a>, produced for Brown University\u2019s\u00a0Costs of War Project<\/a>, I was encouraged by the\u00a0attention<\/a>\u00a0in the media \u2014 which ranged from the\u00a0New York Times<\/em><\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0Fox News<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 because it has generated interest in the millions of people displaced by the U.S. \u201cglobal war on terror.\u201d My\u00a0American University<\/a>\u00a0co-authors and I note that no one inside or outside the U.S. government has previously calculated how many people these wars have displaced.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0conservatively estimates that eight of the most violent \u201ccounterterror\u201d wars the U.S. government has engaged in since 9\/11 \u2014 in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria and Yemen \u2014 have produced 8 million refugees and 29 million internally displaced people. The 37 million total displaced is more than those displaced by any war since at least the start of the 20th century, except World War II.<\/p>\n

Critiques of the report centered around the degree to which the U.S. government is responsible for displacement in all eight of these countries.<\/p>\n

People agreed that the George W. Bush administration launched the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, some have said that the other countries we include in our estimate \u2014 Libya, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen \u2014 are incredibly complex conflicts in which the U.S. government has been a less central combatant, making it hard to say what role, if any, the U.S. government has played in creating displacement.<\/p>\n

Yet the purpose of our report is not to assess relative responsibility for displacement among different actors. Our report says clearly, \u201cWe are not suggesting the U.S. government or the United States as a country is solely responsible for the displacement.\u201d The Taliban, Iraqi Sunni and Shia militias, the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, the U.K. government and other U.S. allies, and Bashar al Assad share considerable responsibility along with other combatants, governments, and actors.<\/p>\n

Instead, our goal, in keeping with\u00a0those of the broader Costs of War Project<\/a>, is to shed light on the often unacknowledged costs of the U.S. government\u2019s 19-year-long \u201cwar on terror.\u201d<\/p>\n

Our study focuses on the eight countries where the U.S. government bears significant responsibility for wars it has launched (Afghanistan and the oft-ignored overlapping war in Pakistan triggered by invading Afghanistan, and Iraq); escalated as a major combatant (Libya and Syria); or intensified through drone strikes, battlefield advising, logistical support, weapons sales, and other military aid (Yemen, Somalia, and the Philippines).<\/p>\n

Of course these are complex conflicts in which many actors \u2014 in many cases not primarily U.S. actors \u2014 have committed the violence that has displaced people. Still, we include countries\u00a0 beyond Afghanistan and Iraq in our count because the U.S. government has played an undeniable and deep systemic role in these \u201cother wars\u201d through the \u201cwar on terror\u2019s\u201d combat troop deployments, contributions of military support, the rhetoric of \u201ccounterterrorism,\u201d and the\u00a0trillions of dollars<\/a>\u00a0that have supported these efforts. Reckoning with the effects of the entirety of our \u201cwar on terror\u201d is a responsibility U.S. citizens cannot ignore.<\/p>\n

With Syria in particular, many readers of the report have rightly noted the difficulty in assessing the U.S. role in causing displacement. Again, we are not blaming the U.S. government alone for the displacement of the 7.1 million Syrians we include in our total. Deep responsibility lies with other combatants who have played larger roles during the Syrian civil war (2011\u2013present). They include Assad and the Syrian government, the Islamic State, Syrian rebel groups, the Russian and Turkish governments, and other outside forces.<\/p>\n

s a result our methodology for calculating displacement linked to U.S. involvement in Syria<\/a>\u00a0was conservative. We began our calculation in 2014, when the U.S. military started fighting in Syria, but we could have included larger numbers displaced due to U.S. support for Syrian rebels since at least 2013. Some would argue that we should include all of Syria\u2019s displaced (likely more than 20 million people since 2011) given the role of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in destabilizing the Middle East and creating the Islamic State and other militant groups in the first place.<\/p>\n

Our calculation also focused narrowly on Syrians displaced in and from five of Syria\u2019s 14 provinces where U.S. forces have fought the Islamic State and operated from military bases since 2014. This is how we derive the figure of 7.1 million displaced, which is well under half of Syria\u2019s total displaced people. It\u2019s important to note that our calculation is an estimate based on the best available data from the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, and other international organizations; displacement statistics are always estimates giving a sense of displacement\u2019s scale rather than precise counts.<\/p>\n

The larger point is that tens of millions have been displaced by the wars the U.S. government has engaged in since 2001 in the name of fighting terrorism.<\/p>\n

In Afghanistan and Iraq alone, the total displaced population reached 14.5 million. This sum itself exceeds displacement in any war since the start of the 20th century except World War II. Our report\u2019s total also includes 3.7 million displaced Pakistanis; 1.7 million displaced Filipinos; 4.2 million displaced Somalis; 4.4 million displaced Yemenis; 1.2 million displaced Libyans; and the 7.1 million displaced Syrians.<\/p>\n

Ultimately no number can convey the immensity of displacement\u2019s damage. For individuals, families, towns, cities, regions, and entire countries, displacement has caused incalculable harm physically, socially, emotionally, and economically. We encourage others to build on and improve our research.<\/p>\n

Many, we hope, will agree on the bottom line: we must focus on the suffering of those forced by war to flee their homes.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________________<\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>David Vine<\/a> is Professor of Anthropology at American University in Washington, DC. Vine is the director of the American University Public Anthropology Clinic and a board member of Brown University\u2019s Costs of War Project. Vine\u2019s newest book,\u00a0<\/em>The United States of War: A Global History of America\u2019s Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State (University of California Press), was released on October 13, 2020.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – transnational.live<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

7 Dec 2020 – Our goal is to shed light on the 19-year-long \u201cwar on terror.\u201d Our study focuses on the eight countries where the U.S. government bears significant responsibility for wars it has launched (Afghanistan and the overlapping war in Pakistan triggered by invading Afghanistan, and Iraq); escalated as a major combatant (Libya and Syria); or intensified through drone strikes, battlefield advising, logistical support, weapons sales, and other military aid (Yemen, Somalia, and the Philippines).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":174758,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[867,1161,1188,120,267,1126,260,487,1050,504,950,291,1105,780,769,91,86,109,287,95,70,126,118,492,172,75],"class_list":["post-174757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-militarism","tag-anglo-america","tag-arms-industry","tag-arms-race","tag-conflict","tag-geopolitics","tag-hegemony","tag-history","tag-human-rights","tag-imperialism","tag-international-relations","tag-invasion","tag-military","tag-military-industrial-complex","tag-military-intervention","tag-military-supremacy","tag-nato","tag-occupation","tag-politics","tag-power","tag-us-military","tag-usa","tag-violence","tag-war","tag-war-on-terror","tag-west","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}