<div dir="ltr">
<div id="gmail-toolbar" class="gmail-toolbar-container">
</div><div class="gmail-container" dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail-header gmail-reader-header gmail-reader-show-element">
<font size="1"><a href="https://fpif.org/the-u-s-war-on-terror-has-displaced-37-million-people/">https://fpif.org/the-u-s-war-on-terror-has-displaced-37-million-people/</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">The U.S. 'War on Terror' Has Displaced 37 Million People<br></h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">David Vine - September 23, 2020<br></div>
<div class="gmail-meta-data">
<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr"></div>
</div>
</div>
<hr>
<div class="gmail-content">
<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div id="gmail-container">
<div id="gmail-content">
<div id="gmail-inner-content">
<div id="gmail-main">
<p>Here’s why we used the numbers we did — and what they can and can’t tell us.</p>
<p>
<span>
By </span>
,
September 23, 2020. </p>
<div><div id="gmail-attachment_35601" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://fpif.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/shutterstock_353854877-722x482.jpg" alt="" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="452" height="302"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-35601" class="gmail-wp-caption-text">Syrian war refugees in Turkey (Shutterstock)</p></div>
<p>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 — and perhaps as many as 59 million — to flee their homes.</p>
<p>As a co-author of the underlying <a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2020/Displacement_Vine%20et%20al_Costs%20of%20War%202020%2009%2008.pdf" title="report" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">report</a>, produced for Brown University’s <a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/" title="Costs of War Project" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Costs of War Project</a>, I was encouraged by the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/08/magazine/displaced-war-on-terror.html" title="attention" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">attention</a> in the media — which ranged from the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/08/magazine/displaced-war-on-terror.html" title="New York Times" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><i>New York Times</i></a> to <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/37-million-people-displaced-americas-global-war-on-terror" title="Fox News" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Fox News</a> — because it has generated interest in the millions of people displaced by the U.S. “global war on terror.” My <a href="https://www.davidvine.net/publicanthropologyclinic.html" title="American University" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">American University</a>
co-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>
<p>The <a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2020/Displacement_Vine%20et%20al_Costs%20of%20War%202020%2009%2008.pdf" title="report" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">report</a>
conservatively estimates that eight of the most violent “counterterror”
wars the U.S. government has engaged in since 9/11 — in Afghanistan,
Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria and Yemen — 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>
<p>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>
<p>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 — Libya, Pakistan, the Philippines,
Somalia, Syria, and Yemen — 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>
<p>Yet the purpose of our report is not to assess relative
responsibility for displacement among different actors. Our report says
clearly, “We are not suggesting the U.S. government or the United States
as a country is solely responsible for the displacement.” 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>
<p>Instead, our goal, in keeping with <a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/about" title="those of the broader Costs of War Project" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">those of the broader Costs of War Project</a>, is to shed light on the often unacknowledged costs of the U.S. government’s 19-year-long “war on terror.”</p>
<p>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>
<p>Of course these are complex conflicts in which many actors — in many
cases not primarily U.S. actors — have committed the violence that has
displaced people. Still, we include countries beyond Afghanistan and
Iraq in our count because the U.S. government has played an undeniable
and deep systemic role in these “other wars” through the “war on
terror’s” combat troop deployments, contributions of military support,
the rhetoric of “counterterrorism,” and the <a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2019/budgetary-costs-post-911-wars-through-fy2020-64-trillion" title="trillions of dollars" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">trillions of dollars</a>
that have supported these efforts. Reckoning with the effects of the
entirety of our “war on terror” is a responsibility U.S. citizens cannot
ignore.</p>
<p>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–present). They include Assad and the
Syrian government, the Islamic State, Syrian rebel groups, the Russian
and Turkish governments, and other outside forces.</p>
<p>As a result our methodology for calculating displacement linked to <a href="https://everycrsreport.com/reports/RL33487.html" title="U.S. involvement in Syria" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">U.S. involvement in Syria</a>
was 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’s 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>
<p>Our calculation also focused narrowly on Syrians displaced in and
from five of Syria’s 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’s total displaced people. It’s 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’s scale rather than precise counts.</p>
<p>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>
<p>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’s 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>
<p>Ultimately no number can convey the immensity of displacement’s
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>
<p>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>
</div>
<p><i>David Vine 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’s Costs of War Project. Vine’s newest book, </i><b><i>The United States of War: A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts</i></b><i>, from Columbus to the Islamic State (University of California Press), will be released on October 13.</i></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div></div></div>
</div>
<div>
</div>
</div>
</div>