On Monday 12 July, the head of US military operations in Afghanistan, General Scott Miller, completed his deployment and handed over to Marine General Frank McKenzie. In a telling change of command, McKenzie will be based thousands of miles away from Afghanistan in Tampa, Florida, where he heads US Central Command.
During the 20-year campaign, the Americans lost more than 2,400 troops, with more than 20,000 wounded, many of whom have suffered life-changing physical and mental illnesses. The losses to the Afghans were massively higher. As Associated Press journalist Kathy Gannon wrote in the Military Times, “71,344 civilians; 78,314 Afghan military and police; and 84,191 opposition fighters died during the conflict”. The figures, which were calculated by Brown University’s Costs of War Project, “do not include deaths caused by disease, loss of access to food, water, infrastructure, and/or other indirect consequences of the war”.
Neither do they include the impact of mass displacement of people, and refugee flows, especially to neighbouring countries such as Iran and Pakistan. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reports that 2.7 million Afghans have already been displaced this year because of the violence, and warns of “a looming humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan as the escalating conflict brings increased human suffering and civilian displacement”.
