The Human and Economic Impact of the war in Afghanistan

For 18 long years the US has been in Afghanistan trying to weed out the Taliban. Earlier this month, the Trump administration has begun the extraction of U.S. military personal in the country in abidance with the U.S. - Taliban peace agreement. The removal of the armed forces comes at a time of political uncertainty in Kabul, which could potentially threaten the deal. 

Hundreds of troops have begun leaving Afghanistan and will not re replaced as the United States goes ahead with it’s plan to cut troop numbers from 13,000 to 8,600, a U.S. official said. The pullout comes amid recent elections that took place in Afghanistan in which rival leaders were sworn in as President in separate ceremonies. This further creates a complication for the United States going ahead the deal and to finally end the almost two decade war.The deal is threatened as the dispute between President Ashraf Ghani, who was decanted as the winner of the election in September 2019, and his rival Abdullah Abdullah. Abdullah had cited fraud charges in the votes that made Ghani President. That along with the elections complaints commission will prove to be a tough hurdle to get pass and poses a threat to key steps in the deal and even risk evolving into violence. 

Defense Secretary Mark Esper had stated on March 2 that the approval to start the withdrawal of American troops had already come in, well within the 10 days that was stated in the deal. The ultimate goal of this deal is for all troops to leave the area within 14 months, if the security condition are adhered to. 

The agreement with the Taliban comes after a seven-day ‘reduction in violence’, which the Trumo administration used as a test to see whether or not the Taliban were serious about moving forward to a peace agreement. 

Afghanistan’s economy has greatly suffered because of this war due to severely depleted infrastructure and resources. Not to mention the cost human lives that this war has been responsible for. According to the New York Times, since 2001 the United States’ war with Al-Qaeda and Taliban have resulted with the death of 25 soldiers and police officers every day. 

Boston University’s Watson Institute have researched this extensively and have come to the conclusion that between the years of 2001 and 2015, 111,000 have died due to the war. According to figures coming from Afghan officials, an additional 28,592 soldiers and officers have been killed between 2015 and 2018. Another study conducted by a Stanford Professor Bethany Lacina and a researcher at the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo Nils Petter Gleditsch, the number of deaths that took place while in combat account for less than 10% of the total deaths. 

The casualty number also does not take into account injuries that lead to death, civilian death, and various infections and diseases that spread from war. If we were to quantify all of the numbers and suing the model used by Lacina and Gleditsch, the overall result would be a staggering 250 deaths a day, or 1750 a week.

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If the human cost wasn’t already bad enough, there is also the severe Economic cost of war. Though there is not exact statistics on this particular category for Afghanistan, it can be accurately estimated by looking at other parts of the World. 

Economic Professors at Oxford University Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler have estimated that the overall economic output for a war is roughly 105% of a country’s Gross Domestic Product. Applying that model to Afghanistan, we get a staggering number of $60 million a day. That leads to $21, 856 billion deficit. For a country that has a development budget of close to $2 billion, the cost is beyond fathomable.

It takes countries decades to regain their economic numbers before they went to war. The consequences of the United States’ war with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan have been baffling significant in terms of both human and Economic output. 

Now that the war has ended, it would be in the best interest of Afghanistan to continue it’s best efforts to honor the deal they made with the U.S. Only time will tell if the Graveyard of Empires can be reinserted to it’s former glory.