Afghan refugee girls sit behind a wooden cart in a slum in Pakistan. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)
Hundreds of thousands of people on all sides of the wars have died directly of the violence – the vast majority of them civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. Far more numerous are those who have died as an indirect result of the wars’ destruction of infrastructure and access to basic needs or who have suffered war injuries or illnesses. Millions of people living in the war zones have been displaced from their homes indefinitely, and many now live in grossly inadequate conditions. More