Today marks the final withdrawal of coalition forces from Afghanistan after almost 20 years. What did the conflict cost us and what lessons does it provide for ‘Global Britain’?

Human suffering

It would be callous to discuss resource and opportunity costs before first reflecting on the monumental human cost of the conflict, in particular that of the UK service personnel and the Afghan civilians caught in the cross fire.

NOTE: Civilian death figures include only recorded direct violent deaths and are subject to under-reporting. Several times as many have been killed indirectly as a result of the war — due to water loss, sewage and other infrastructural issues, and war-related disease.³

Even before the Taliban advance Afghans were one of the world’s largest refugee populations, with the post 2001 coalition invasion and occupation displacing over 5.9 million people. ⁴

National psychological studies published earlier this year show an acute mental health crisis – 47.12% of the population were in psychological distress as a result of trauma, with 39.44% suffering substantial impairment due to mental health issues⁵.

Budgetary cost – U.S.

We have a good understanding of US resource costs due to the excellent work of the ‘Cost of War’ Project at Brown University, who calculate the cost to date at $2.313 Trillion to the US public purse⁶. That is around $300 million per day, every day, for the entire two decade duration of the war⁷.

Notably the war in Afghanistan (as in Iraq) was paid via borrowing rather than taxation increases – in contrast to wars in Korea and Vietnam which saw the top rate of tax (temporarily) increase by 92% and 77% respectively. This means that ‘the war on terror’ will cost the US public purse $6.5 Trillion in interest payments alone by 2050⁸ – as never before the financial burden of the war will be shouldered by future generations.

Budgetary cost – U.K.

The overall cost to the UK public of the war in Afghanistan takes some unpacking. Ministry of Defence figures on the cost of military operations and interventions puts the figure at £27.7 billion⁹. This budget was taken from the Treasury Special Reserve and is calculated based on net additional costs vs not taking military action and therefore doesn’t include the overall MOD budget, the increased costs of maintaining oversized military forces or lifetime costs such as veterans payments or the cost to the NHS of treating the thousands of seriously injured service personnel.

In 2013 a UK military analyst published Investment in Blood, a detailed analysis of the full costs of the war in Iraq to the UK public purse, putting the full UK costs at £37 Billion by 2013¹⁰.

Overall Channel4 news fact-check placed the operational costs of the war in Afghanistan at around double the official costs, even before looking at ongoing healthcare costs or the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme. Professor Malcolm Chalmers, of the Royal United Services Institute estimates the additional costs of the latter alone to be an additional £2billion¹¹.

Squandered opportunity

As we wait for the outcome of the first weeks of Taliban rule, it is hard to argue that the consequences of the 2001 intervention have been anything other than disastrous. The investment made by coalition forces was enormous – the US contribution alone was over $50,000 for every single one of Afghanistan’s 40 million population, more than most Afghan’s will earn over their entire lives⁷. Afghanistan remains one of the world’s poorest countries, with a per capita GDP last year of just $508¹² – such an investment made in infrastructure would have dramatically transformed the country and the lives of it’s people.

At the height of the conflict the UK was pouring over £4bn a year into the war in Afghanistan¹³, yet similar provision was never made for peaceful development in the country with the UK quietly cutting aid to Afghanistan by 78% earlier this year to just £37 Million in 2021/22¹⁴. That means that in the vital transition year, the UK was willing to invest less than 1% in development as we’d previously spent annually on occupation. Thankfully as a result of pressure this cut has now been reversed and aid payments are to be increased – though still below 2019 levels.

Aside from opium production (which the Taliban opposed when last in power) the main source of GDP for Afghanistan is foreign aid, it remains to be seen how much the international community is able to achieve via conditional aid, particularly in areas such as women’s social and political rights. Given the complete failure of the military project to deliver any of the strategic aims of the coalition or to provide stability and prosperity to the Afghan people, it is a project we have a responsibility to support wholeheartedly.

Ironically it is now being argued that the Taliban are now the best option for security in the region and as a western ally against ISKP and other more militant groups in the region¹⁶ and now the Taliban have become the custodians of billions of pounds worth of military hardware purchased for the Afghan army. Aside from providing the Taliban with an air-force for the first time, the haul includes hundreds of thousands of assault weapons and thousands of Humvees. As late as 3 weeks ago the NATO website was boasting of their latest shipment of military hardware to the Afghan army (US$72 million worth in 2021)¹⁷ on top of the billions in arms supplied by the Pentagon.

Politically the Taliban have been elevated from international pariahs in 2001 to victors in a perceived western imperialist project, earning them greater influence both nationally and internationally¹⁸.

Misguided from the outset

Within weeks of the September 11th attacks the Taliban were offering to hand Osama Bin Laden and other al-Qaeda militants over to a third country for trial, that offer was roundly rejected by President Bush in favour of full scale invasion¹⁹. Bin Laden – himself the recipient of CIA and US special forces training during a previous US intervention – remained at large for another decade. By November 2001 the Taliban were offering complete surrender in return for amnesty, an offer again refused by the US leadership in favour of continued war and occupation²⁰.

It’s hard not to wonder how the world might look today, if ‘the coalition’ had accepted such offers and invested even a small fraction of the money spent on the ‘war on terror’ into development, education and peace building in the region. The U.S. media are finally facing up to the question of how the war was allowed to begin in the first place²¹ – as the central international enabler and partner, the UK must face the same question. Sadly as the UK Integrated review demonstrates the UK Government seems intent on wilfully ignoring the fact that it’s interventions in Iraq, Syria, Libya and now Afghanistan have failed to make any strategic difference, but have instead piled misery upon misery.

1. Afghanistan statistics: UK deaths, casualties, mission costs and refugees 17 August 2021 – House of Commons Library – https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-9298/CBP-9298.pdf
2. For 2001-2007, see Crawford, Neta C. (2015, May 22). “War Related Death, Injury and Displacement in Afghanistan and Pakistan 2001-2014,” Costs of
   War, retrieved from
   https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2015/War%20Related%20Casualties%20Afghanistan%20and%20Pakistan%202001-
   2014%20FIN.pdf; for 2008-2020, see the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) annual Reports on the Protection of Civilians in
   Armed Conflict, retrieved from https://unama.unmissions.org/protection-of-civilians-reports.
3. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2015/War%20Related%20Casualties%20Afghanistan%20and%20Pakistan%202001
4. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2021/Costs%20of%20War_Vine%20et%20al_Displacement%20Update%20August%202021.pdf
5. https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-021-03273-4
6. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/human-and-budgetary-costs-date-us-war-afghanistan-2001-2022
7. https://www.forbes.com/sites/hanktucker/2021/08/16/the-war-in-afghanistan-cost-america-300-million-per-day-for-20-years-with-big-bills-yet-to-come/?sh=78883a6e7f8d
8. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2020/Peltier%202020%20-%20The%20Cost%20of%20Debt-financed%20War.pdf
9. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/defence-departmental-resources-2020
10. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300190625/investment-blood
11. https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/how-much-has-the-afghan-conflict-cost-britain
12. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=AF
13. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/afghanistan-campaign-set-cost-ps4bn-2327488.html
14. https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/uk-cuts-direct-aid-to-afghanistan-by-78-at-same-time-as-withdrawing-military-support-amid-taliban-advance-1117084
16. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/24/can-us-work-with-taliban-afghanistan-thats-central-question/¹⁵ – those groups themselves a consequence on the wider war on terror.

    The region is certainly a good deal more unstable and now awash with high tech weaponry. There have long been concerns about the CIA arming militia groups (including those accused serious human rights abuses) to fight the Taliban ¹⁵https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2019/Costs%20of%20War%2C%20CIA%20Afghanistan_Aug%2021%2C%202019.pdf

17. https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_186009.htm
18. https://www.economist.com/asia/2021/08/18/a-taliban-run-afghanistan-will-be-less-isolated-than-the-west-may-hope
19. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.terrorism5
20. https://www.vox.com/world/22634008/us-troops-afghanistan-cold-war-bush-bin-laden
21. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/23/world/middleeast/afghanistan-taliban-deal-united-states.html