Across the Middle East and North Africa, this kind of experience is even more recent. Twenty-four-hour reporting in the Western media has covered many of the appalling atrocities carried out by Russian troops, but you could scour the mainstream media in vain for coverage of similar incidents perpetrated by invading Western troops from the Iraq or Afghan wars. This does not mean there were none – a few such incidents came to light at the time, and more have emerged since. But many of these are thanks to Wikileaks and Julian Assange, currently facing deportation to the United States.
Among the exceptions to the lack of coverage are two specific reports by highly regarded Western war correspondents that were published at the time, rather than long afterwards. Writing in The Washington Post in April 2004, Pamela Constable reported an incident in which Marines rescued troops from a convoy that had been ambushed in the Iraqi city of Fallujah. The US troops suffered casualties but not deaths, but the Marines ordered a devastating response that night, with AC-130 Spectre gunships flattening a six-block area of the city, virtually destroying the area. It was described as a “punitive raid”.
Two years later, Tom Lasseter reported in the Houston Chronicle on the aftermath of an ambush by paramilitaries of soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division. Again, the US forces took casualties but not deaths, but their response was to tie two of the corpses of the insurgents to the front of their jeeps and parade them through the nearby town. As they did, Lasseter reported that “Iraqi families stood in front of the surrounding houses. They watched the corpses ride by and glared at the American soldiers.”
The Marines and the soldiers of the 101st Airborne believed they were fighting terrorists in a just war linked to 9/11, which was still very fresh in their minds. But to the Iraqis, the Americans were violent occupiers being resisted by brave young defenders.
In Ukraine, Russian troops have flattened towns and large parts of cities, but six years ago the US-led coalition in the anti-ISIS air war flattened the old city of Mosul in northern Iraq. Even now, recovery continues to be slow as “children play in bomb craters”.
After Mosul, the US/UK/French coalition moved on to Raqqa in Syria, the focus of ISIS control, and reduced much of the city to ruins. A joint analysis by Amnesty International and Airwars concluded that at least 1,600 civilians had been killed in the assault.
There may not be direct equivalence, and some Russian behaviour has very likely exceeded the worst that took place in the Western wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Libya, but it is easy to forget the overall impact of the wars.
According to the Costs of War programme at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, “Over 929,000 people have died in the post-9/11 wars due to direct war violence, and several times as many due to the reverberating effects of war.” The report says that more than 387,000 civilians were killed as a result of fighting, and the wars also created 38 million refugees and displaced persons. The conflicts were “accompanied by violations of human rights and civil liberties, in the US and abroad”. The report puts the US price tag for post 9/11 conflicts at over $8trn.
The Institute also reports that deaths as a direct result of war in Afghanistan and Pakistan alone in the 20 years to August 2021 ran to 243,000, including over 70,000 civilians. Note the emphasis is on direct deaths. The indirect deaths from hunger, malnutrition, cold, lack of medical facilities and other factors will be very much higher.
For the general reader across the Western world, little of this would be recognisable unless they are in the minority who follow the few outlets that dig beyond the mainstream media. But these stories and statistics will resonate with readers across the majority of the world, and perhaps help explain those radically different world views on the war in Ukraine.
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