Twenty years ago, the 9/11 attacks unleashed the so-called ‘War on Terror’”, which began with the US invasion of Afghanistan that same year. It was followed by the invasion of Iraq two years later in what was dubbed ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ – and its impact is still being felt across the country today.
In the intervening years, the narrative of the ‘War on Terror’ has become one of justifications, explanations, accusations and an absence of accountability that left a destroyed and plundered state and a people that is still fighting for their rights. Its legacy is in the names and faces of the innocent, of the helpless and the poor, the millions of refugees, the bodies picked up from the streets of Iraqi cities, buried in mass graves, unidentified and unclaimed.
Since the invasion, Iraq Body Count has recorded between 185,000 and 209,000 civilian deaths as a result of violence. The number grows to 288,000 when combatants are included.
