May 28, 2014
£30billion - the cost of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: Interventions branded ‘strategic failures’ by respected think-tank
Tania Steere and Ian Drury
Daily Mail
The cost of Britain’s ‘failed’ war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq has reached almost £30 billion.
Despite the high cost, the interventions have been branded ‘strategic failures’ by a respected defence think-tank.
Toppling Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein helped radicalise young Muslims in the UK and far from reducing international terrorism, the Iraq war ‘had the effect of promoting it’, according to the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).
Horror: A British soldier, his clothes on fire, jumps from a tank in Basra, Iraq, in 2005
Critics said the cost of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and sending thousands of troops to Helmand province in Afghanistan in 2006 - around £30billion and 627 lives lost - was simply not worth the results.
The Mail first revealed last month that the authoritative study, Wars In Peace, estimated the cost of military operations since the Cold War as high as £72billion.
The study calculated the cost of UK military interventions after the collapse of Communism, from the first Gulf War in 1990-91 to the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan and EU training missions last year, from Ministry of Defence freedom of information responses.
The bill for military action in the past 24 years was £34.7billion.
The sum is enough to pay nearly 5,000 nurses or police officers for their entire career, or fund free university tuition for all higher education students for a decade.
This included £20.6billion in Afghanistan and £9.6billion during the Iraq war - 84 per cent of the total. Another £1.5billion was spent in Bosnia and £1.1billion in Kosovo on peacekeeping missions and £238million on the war in Libya.
The bill for military action in the past 24 years was £34.7billion.
The figures do not include what the Armed Forces would have been spending on their normal running costs such as training exercises, fuel, accommodation and pay.
The study also estimates another £30billion may have to be spent on long-term care for war veterans and compensation payments for deaths and injuries could add another £7billion - bringing the total cost to £71.7billion.
In the study, military analysts said the UK had succeeded in six out of ten major military operations - but failed in four.
Interventions in the first Gulf War, Sierra Leone in 2000 and the start of operations in Afghanistan in 2001 which drove out Al Qaeda and the Taliban leadership were among those praised.
But the UK failed in Bosnia in the early 1990s, the 2003 invasion in Iraq, the deployment of troops to the insurgents’ stronghold of Helmand and the air strikes in Libya which helped oust Colonel Gaddafi but fuelled a brutal civil war.
RUSI’s most scathing criticism is reserved for the Iraq deployment. It said: ‘Far from reducing international terrorism… the invasion had the effect of promoting it.
‘The rise of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was a reaction to this invasion, and to the consequent marginalisation of Iraq’s Sunni population.
The cost of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and sending thousands of troops to Helmand province in Afghanistan in 2006 comes to around £30billion
‘Today, AQAP and other radical jihadist groups stretching across the Iraqi-Syrian border, pose new terrorist threats to the UK and its allies that might not have existed, at least in this form, had Saddam remained in power.’
Sir David Omand, former senior security and intelligence adviser to Mr Blair, said that the term ‘War on Terror’ may have ‘helped to create the sense of an inevitable conflict between the west and the world of Islam’.
However, he said Britain was now a safer place than at the time of the September 11 attacks on the US.
The study said military action in Iraq and Afghanistan had dented the reputation of the Armed Forces and reduced the appetite for further overseas interventions.
The failure of Parliament to vote for operations against Syria last year took place ‘in the shadow of Iraq’, said RUSI.
An MOD spokesman said: ‘Over the last 13 years the international military campaign in Afghanistan has reduced the terrorist threat from this region and helped train a 350,000 strong Afghan National Security Force who now have lead security responsibility for Afghanistan’s 30 million citizens.
‘Development and diplomatic activities have also improved the lives of Afghan people and helped deliver basic needs, such as access to health, education and the opportunity to vote.’
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