Statement on Daniel Pocock

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Creating Refugees:
Displacement Caused by the United States' Post-9/11 Wars

David Vine, CalaCoffman, KatalinaKhoury, Madison Lovasz, Helen Bush,
Rachael Leduc, and Jennifer Walkup

August 19, 2021

This report uses recent data to update our 2020 calculation of the
number of people displaced in the eight most violent wars the United
States has waged since 2001, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen,
Somalia, the Philippines, Libya, and Syria. Using 2020 and 2021 data
unavailable at the time of our initial report [hyperlink copied with
href], this update conservatively estimates that at least 38 million
people have fled their homes -- around one million more displaced
people than a year earlier. [1]

Our initial report was the first to comprehensively measure the number
of people displaced in the wars the U.S. military has waged since
President George W. Bush announced a "global war on terror" following
Al Qaeda's September 11, 2001 attacks. That report details a
methodology for calculating wartime displacement, provides an overview
of displacement in each war-affected country, and points to
displacement's individual and societal impacts. [2]

Wartime displacement (alongside war deaths and injuries) must be
central to any analysis of the post-9/11 wars and their consequences.
Displacement also must be central to any consideration of the future
use of military force by the United States or others. Ultimately, the
figure of 38 million -- and perhaps as many as 60 million -- raises
the question of who bears responsibility for repairing the damage
inflicted on those displaced.

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1: The initial report (2020) is here:
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2020/Displacement_Vine%20et%20al_Costs%20of%20War%202020%2009%2008.pdf
2: We have updated our calculation with 2020 and some 2021 data from
the same sources used in our original report. We include the UN
refugee agency UNHCR's estimate of 270,000 displaced in Afghanistan
from January to July 2021, which has been widely cited in the media.
Our update also refines our calculation of displacement in Syria by
including displacement only during the four months of 2014 when U.S.
military personnel first became actively engaged in the Syrian civil
war. As throughout our Syria calculations, we solely calculate
displacement experienced in the five Syrian provinces where U.S.
military personnel have fought and operated.