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, Iraq and elsewhere. Far more have died of the reverberating effects of the wars, which have destroyed infrastructure and access to basic needs, and many suffer from war injuries or illnesses. Millions of people living in the war zones have been displaced from their homes, and many now live in grossly inadequate conditions. More