Trillions of dollars spent on wars in last decade

Calcutta News.Net
Thursday 30th June, 2011

The US could end up spending nearly $4.4 trillion on the war on terror in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, new research says.

Nearly 10 years after the declaration of a war on terror, the situations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have cost the US between $2.3 trillion to $2.7 trillion, according to the report by Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies.

The figure is more than three times higher than U.S. President Barack Obama’s estimate in a recent speech. When Mr Obama recently announced a partial withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, he said America's wars have cost the country $1 trillion dollars.

The Brown University report however not only covered direct costs of the post-9/11 wars, but also included costs of caring for current and future war veterans and projected war spending from 2012 to 2020, Xinhua reported.

Despite the U.S. president’s planned drawdown of 33,000 troops, there will still be almost 70,000 troops in Afghanistan, at an estimated cost of $1.2 million each.

The final price tag for the wars will range from $3.7 trillion to $4.4 trillion, the report estimated.

“The reasonable estimate is approximately $4 trillion for the war, up to today, and including some of the future costs that we are obligated to pay for veterans care," Catherine Lutz, one of the report's researchers, said Wednesday. "In addition, another $1 trillion in interest payments on the debt, we estimate will be required through 2020.”

The wars in the three countries have killed hundreds of thousands of people, the majority of whom were civilians.

In addition, the wars have wounded more than a million people and created over 7.8 million refugees.

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