From the CBC in Canada: The long 'War on Terror' It has been 17 years since two hijacked passenger aircraft cut across a brilliant Manhattan morning sky and slammed into the Twin Towers. The first, American Airlines Flight 11, plunged into the south tower at 8:46 a.m. The second, United Airlines Flight 175, struck the north tower 17 minutes later as confused office workers, firefighters and police struggled to figure out what was going on. A half-hour after that, another commandeered jet — American Airlines Flight 77 — crashed into the side of the Pentagon, across the Potomac from Washington, D.C. By the time United Airlines Flight 93 nose-dived into a field outside Shanksville, Pa., the south tower of the World Trade Center had already collapsed. The north tower followed at 10:28 a.m. eastern. In all, 2,977 people, including 26 Canadians, fell victim to the deadliest act of aggression on American soil since Pearl Harbour. From start to finish, the 9/11 attacks lasted just 102 minutes. The "War on Terror" that President George W. Bush launched in response has been going on for 6,183 days, 11 years longerthan the Second World War. A recent estimate of the cost of America's wars since 2001 — some directly related to 9/11, others aligned to broader goals — puts the price of military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, plus the increased security at home, at $5.6 trillion US as of the end of this month. In Afghanistan, where the fighting started and hasn't stopped, 3,557 NATO coalition soldiers have been killed since 2001, including 158 Canadians. The death toll for the Afghan Army and police has been much higher — as estimated 25,000 between 2012 and 2016 alone. There have been a further 4,866 allied military dead in Iraq — 4,543 of them Americans. It's impossible to say how many Taliban or al-Qaeda fighters have been killed. Ditto for members of the various and ever-evolving militant factions in Iraq. Last year, one former senior U.S. military commander estimated that ISIS had lost "between 60,000 and 70,000" soldiers in Iraq and Syria. Civilian deaths are likely even higher. One site that uses local news reports to track casualties puts the number of civilian deaths in Iraq at between 182,000 and 204,000 since 2003, including 2,500 people killed so far in 2018. In Afghanistan, the numbers are harder to come by. A 2016 report estimated that almost 31,500 civilians had died inside the country since 2001, and a further 22,000 had been killed in neighbouring Pakistan.
The UN, which has been tracking deaths in Afghanistan since 2007, issued its latest tally in July, finding that 1,692 civilians had been killed through the first six months of 2018, a record high. Roland.
