Less than a month after 9/11, the US invaded Afghanistan, launching what President George W Bush called the “War on Terror” – a series of seemingly endless wars and military campaigns spanning Afghanistan, Iraq and countries across the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.
According to the Cost of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs estimates that US-led wars since 2001 have directly or indirectly killed an estimated 4.5 to 4.7 million people – including approximately 940,000 direct deaths and 3.6 to 3.8 million indirect deaths from disease, malnutrition and health complications.