Since 9/11 at least 4.5 million people have died as a consequence of wars in the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia, a new report says.
A research report from the Costs of War project at Brown Universitys Watson Institute estimates that of the 4.5 million fatalities, there were at least 3.6 to 3.7 million indirect deaths caused by a variety of factors.
The categories in the report are economic collapse and food insecurity; public services and health infrastructure destruction; environmental contamination; reverberating trauma and violence, and other impacts.
The US invaded Afghanistan and drove the Taliban from power in retaliation for the 11 September 2001 attacks, which had been planned while al-Qaeda's leader, Osama bin Laden, was living in the country under Taliban protection.
The number of deaths caused by post-9/11 conflicts has been a source of intense controversy, as politics and inexact science have intersected in heated debates of conflicting interests.
In 2015, the Nobel Prize-winning Physicians for Social Responsibility estimated that more than one million people had...