Wars in Pakistan and Afghanistan leave 150,000 dead: Study
Washington: The wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan have left nearly 150,000 soldiers and civilians dead since 2001, a new US study estimates. Another 162,000 have been wounded since the US-led offensive that toppled the Taliban government in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks, says the study by the Costs of War Project, based at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.
The war in Afghanistan is intensifying rather than moving toward an end, it added, as the number of deaths and injuries has increased significantly in recent years.
This, and the United States’ announcement this year that it is slowing its troop withdrawal, “underscores the fact that the war in Afghanistan is not ending. It is getting worse,” said the study, dated May 22.
In Pakistan, the war has seen a lower intensity in recent years although there remains “very hot conflict” in the northwest of the country. The study focuses on death and injury caused directly by the stuff of warfare, what it calls “bullets, bombs, fire and so on.”
War also causes indirect deaths, as people perish due to malnutrition, lack of health care and the hardship of displacement. But this figure is very hard to tally.
