0:04 the U.S launched its so-called war on
0:07 terror in the wake of 9 11. invasions of
0:09 Afghanistan and Iraq followed with huge
0:11 loss of life instability spread across
0:13 many parts of the Middle East so what's
0:33 hello there and welcome to the program
0:36 I'm Nastasia Tay now after U.S President
0:38 George W bush launched what he labeled
0:41 the war on terror in 2001 for people in
0:43 countries like Afghanistan and Iraq
0:46 years of violence death destruction and
0:48 political instability were to follow
0:50 thousands were also detained and
0:52 illegally taken to other countries many
0:54 tortured or subjected to brutal
0:55 treatment and held for years without
0:58 trial resistance grew and pushed the U.S
1:00 and NATO out of Afghanistan two years
1:03 ago a new investigation from a top U.S
1:05 University says more than 4.5 million
1:08 people died directly or indirectly from
1:10 the so-called war on terror we'll be
1:12 discussing its Legacy with the report's
1:13 author and our guests in just a few
1:15 moments but first this report from
1:19 Alexandra Byers on how it all began
1:21 it's been more than two decades since
1:33 followed by two devastating and costly
1:36 Wars in November 2001 the U.S led an
1:38 International Coalition to invade
1:41 Afghanistan accusing the Taliban of
1:44 harboring Al-Qaeda Fighters it launched
1:46 a huge bombing campaign and a ground operation
1:47 operation
1:50 tens of thousands of people were killed
1:58 in 2003 the U.S attacked Iraq as part of
2:01 its so-called war on terror accusing its
2:03 leader of stockpiling weapons of mass destruction
2:08 Saddam Hussein and his regime will stop
2:09 at nothing
2:23 were never found major combat operations
2:25 in Iraq have ended
2:27 in the Battle of Iraq
2:30 the United States and our allies have prevailed
2:32 prevailed
2:35 George Bush's Declaration of victory was
2:37 made before the worst violence in Iraq
2:41 was yet to come foreign the legacy of
2:43 both invasions brought disastrous
2:45 consequences for people in the region
2:47 but the so-called war on terror was
2:50 never declared over and wounds it
2:51 inflicted not healed [Music]
2:55 [Music]
2:58 a new study by the costs of War project
3:01 at Brown University estimates the post-9
3:05 11 Wars and their ongoing impact have
3:12 scope of the report includes conflicts
3:15 in places like Pakistan Syria Somalia
3:17 and Yemen there are no official
3:19 statistics for the numbers who died in
3:21 the so-called war on terror but the
3:24 report says there are more indirect
3:26 deaths than Combat fatalities
3:28 indirect deaths are blamed on things
3:30 like the breakdown of economic
3:32 environmental and psychological conditions
3:34 conditions
3:36 more than 20 years since the war in
3:38 Afghanistan the Taliban are back in
3:41 power after a hasty U.S and NATO
3:43 withdrawal almost two years ago
3:46 International donors have Frozen Afghan
3:48 Bank Reserves and its health system is
3:51 on the brink of collapse the report asks
3:54 in a place like Afghanistan can any
3:56 death today be considered unrelated to
3:58 the U.S war
4:02 and what long-lasting impact will it
4:04 continue to have on these countries
4:08 Alexandra Byers for Inside Story [Music]
4:14 well let's now bring in our guests in
4:17 New York Stephanie saval the co-director
4:19 of the costs of war and a non-partisan
4:21 research project based at the Watson
4:22 Institute for international and public
4:24 affairs at Brown University and an
4:27 author of the report in Manchester in
4:30 the United Kingdom Ruba Ali al-hasani A
4:31 postdoctoral Research fellow at
4:33 Lancaster University and also co-founder
4:36 of the Iraqi women academics Network and
4:39 in Bethesda Maryland Michael O'Hanlon a
4:40 senior fellow and director of research
4:42 and foreign policy at the Brookings
4:44 institution a very warm welcome to all
4:45 of you and thanks for joining us today
4:48 on Inside Story Steph this is your
4:50 report I so I'll start with you more
4:53 than 4.5 million deaths that's a really
4:56 startling number it's obviously
4:58 something very difficult to quantify how
5:01 did you get to that number
5:03 yeah this is something that uh the cost
5:06 of War project has been working on for
5:08 years actually I've been I've built on
5:11 the work of colleagues of mine at the
5:14 cost of War project for a long time my
5:17 colleague Nita Crawford has generated an
5:20 uh regularly updated estimate of what
5:22 direct depth so these are people who are
5:24 killed through the weapons of war
5:27 Through Fire the actual combat of war
5:32 that now is up to 906
5:35 000 to 937 000 that's the range that she
5:39 estimates of direct deaths so my report
5:42 Builds on that it uses a ratio from the
5:46 Geneva declaration Secretariat that uh
5:49 current day Wars there's an estimate of
5:52 about uh four indirect deaths for every
5:54 direct death
5:57 um I dug in very deeply to research
5:59 across many fields including
6:01 epidemiology and public health research
6:05 and basically this is the best latest
6:08 information that's out there ideally in
6:10 an ideal scenario there would be teams
6:12 of researchers on the ground local
6:14 researchers doing excess mortality
6:17 studies at going you know house house to
6:20 house doing a surveys of you know who's
6:22 died in the past X number of years to
6:25 get a better more precise figure but in
6:27 the absence of those studies and those
6:29 are really hard to do in war zones
6:32 there's a you know absence of birth and
6:35 death uh certificates and and all of
6:38 those sorts of basic uh Census Data
6:41 um this kind of ratio is the is the best
6:43 that's out there so um that was how we
6:46 generated the 4.5 trillion million
6:48 figure well the so-called war on terror
6:50 itself is a bit of a nebulous concept
6:53 can I ask Stephanie how you chose the
6:55 conflicts that you've included
6:58 yes absolutely this is something also
7:00 drawing on this cost of War project
7:03 framing so this is a you know over 60
7:04 Scholars at this point from around the
7:08 world what we've done is we've said you
7:10 know the U.S counterterrorism has played
7:13 a role not just in Afghanistan Pakistan
7:14 and Iraq
7:17 um those were you know the U.S led Wars
7:19 in those places but also a very
7:23 significant role in Syria Yemen Somalia Libya
7:24 Libya
7:27 um and other places increasingly the
7:29 footprint of the U.S so-called war on
7:33 terror uh it continues and um so this is
7:36 really a framing that tries to look very
7:39 comprehensively at you know of course
7:41 these conflicts are incredibly complex
7:43 we're not saying that the US is the only
7:47 responsible party were merely pointing
7:48 to the fact that there's been an
7:50 intensification of the violence as a
7:53 result of U.S counterterrorism efforts
7:55 and this report is really an attempt to
7:58 come to terms and grapple with that
8:01 sense of responsibility sure ruber I
8:03 understand you were born in the diaspora
8:05 but you've been working with people in
8:07 Iraq on the ground there for many years
8:14 no the numbers are not surprising
8:18 they're damning if anything uh and I am
8:20 tempted to think that the numbers may be
8:23 even higher uh that these may be
8:24 um for the lack of a better word
8:27 conservative maybe or just like
8:29 Stephanie said that you know there are
8:31 many deaths that are unrecorded there
8:33 are many missing people who are unrecorded
8:35 unrecorded
8:37 um I'm currently working on a project on
8:39 enforced disappearances in Iraq so
8:42 that's another issue that has been um
8:43 um tremendously
8:45 tremendously problematic
8:47 problematic
8:50 aspect of life that many Iraqis have had
8:54 to endure since 2003 so the numbers make
8:56 sense and I assume that they're much
8:58 more especially in countries like
9:01 Afghanistan and in Syria now with its
9:03 own conflict going on
9:05 uh Michael turning to you I know that
9:07 you've previously said that the
9:09 so-called war on terror for all of its
9:11 failures has had a number of limited
9:15 successes accidental as some of them may
9:17 actually be but that success as you've
9:19 described it I understand has been
9:21 specifically around preventing attacks
9:24 on American soil but this is then the
9:27 trade-off right 4.5 million deaths first
9:29 of all let me congratulate Stephanie and
9:31 her colleagues at the Watson Center
9:32 they've done very good work over the
9:35 years reminding us that we have to take
9:37 a broader perspective at understanding
9:39 the consequences of war and I generally
9:41 agree with most of the methodologies we
9:43 can talk about some specifics in a
9:45 minute but let me make that point second
9:47 you're correct to argue or to to
9:50 summarize the writings that I've done
9:52 to say that when we think about a
9:56 22-year campaign against you know
9:58 salafism or however you'd like to
10:00 describe the broader Al-Qaeda and
10:02 related movements around the world the
10:03 United States and its Western allies
10:06 have generally been fairly fortunate in
10:08 that the number of subsequent attacks on
10:11 American or even European soil has been
10:13 quite modest compared to the fears we
10:16 all had after 9 11 and of course there
10:18 have been some attacks most notably some
10:20 of the Isis attacks in Europe in the
10:22 middle part of the last decade but
10:25 generally speaking if you want to do a
10:28 plus minus cost benefit assessment of
10:30 the so-called war on terror which may
10:33 not be a good term but you know is often
10:35 still employed then I think we have to
10:37 say that Western countries have done
10:39 pretty well at protecting themselves
10:41 certainly from anything like the
10:44 catastrophic Terror we saw on 9 11 and
10:47 then even in Spain in 2004 or London in
10:50 2005 some of the other attacks sort of
10:55 in Bali Indonesia in 2002 but I you do
10:57 very well and Stephanie does very well
11:00 as well as our colleague in London to
11:02 remind people and of course in the
11:04 broader Middle East people need no
11:06 reminding that these wars have had huge
11:10 human consequences and that war itself
11:11 because it breaks down Society because
11:14 it breaks down Health Care it impedes
11:16 proper nutrition uh it impedes economic
11:19 growth it therefore contributes to a lot
11:21 of indirect deaths that wind up
11:24 outnumbering direct combat deaths and
11:25 Stephanie's right just to remind people
11:28 it's roughly this four to one ratio
11:30 that's a very crude and rough number
11:32 it's a it's an average across many
11:34 different countries many different
11:36 conflicts but the general message is
11:39 correct that war leads to far more
11:41 indirect consequences than we even see
11:44 directly on our TV screens and that's a
11:46 tragedy of conflict it should make
11:49 anyone wary of war the the one last
11:51 thing I'll say however is that bearing
11:54 in mind that the Iraq of Saddam Hussein
11:56 was hardly a peaceful place bearing in
12:00 mind that the Afghanistan of the Taliban
12:02 was hardly a successful country and is
12:05 hardly successful today that these
12:07 excess deaths that we're talking about
12:09 often would have been occurring even
12:12 without the U.S led interventions and I
12:13 know Stephanie is quick to underscore
12:15 that she's not simply blaming the United
12:18 States or its broader war on terror for
12:20 all of these casualties but I do want to
12:21 underscore that when we think about
12:25 excess deaths having looked at again a
12:27 rock under Saddam in his quarter Century
12:30 of terrible rule or the Taliban in
12:32 Afghanistan with the kind of Health Care
12:34 Systems and oppression of women's rights
12:37 and limitations on economic progress
12:39 that they imposed uh it's not as if
12:42 these places would have had peaceful and
12:44 happy Futures if they had been left on
12:46 their own trajectories uh the last point
12:48 I would say however is that Libya
12:50 strikes me as a place that probably
12:51 probably would have done better without
12:54 us that probably would have truly been
12:56 despite Muammar Gaddafi's limitations
12:59 and and his own barbaric accident times
13:02 against his own people Libya was a
13:04 semi-functioning country during his Rule
13:07 and it's been worse since our 2011
13:09 intervention so again we have to bear
13:11 down Case by case but I agree with the
13:13 overall thrust I want to bring Ruba in
13:15 here because it looked very much like
13:16 she wanted to respond to you there Michael
13:18 Michael
13:20 yes thank you
13:22 um I think the key point and what
13:24 Michael has said is that the West has
13:27 been capable of protecting itself that's
13:29 the key word itself
13:32 um because since 2003 not just Iraq and
13:34 Afghanistan but the entire Middle East
13:39 and parts of uh South West Asia have been
13:40 been
13:43 unprotected and have been violated over
13:46 and over in various ways whether it's
13:50 murder or rape or torture or continued
13:54 uh Legacy and reverberations of this
13:56 violence that continues in many various
13:59 forms until this day children are born
14:01 in Fallujah and Boston Iraq with
14:03 congenital birth defects because of
14:07 white phosphorus use and depleted
14:09 uranium in Iraq those are you know
14:12 weapons like West phosphorus is an illegal
14:13 illegal
14:16 use sorry it's an illegal chemical
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