The war on terror, five years on: an era of constant warfare

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Five years ago this week, the Taliban's al-Qa'ida allies made final preparations to launch devastating attacks on America that would precipitate the "war on terror", the US-led invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent invasion of Iraq.

Far from ending terrorism, George Bush's tactics of using overwhelming military might to fight extremism appear to have rebounded, spawning an epidemic of terrorism that has claimed an estimated 72,265 lives since 2001, most of them Iraqi civilians.

The rest, some 30,626, according to official US figures, have been killed in a combination of terror attacks and counter-insurgency actions by the US and its allies. The figures were compiled by the US based National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (Mipt).

A US led-invasion swept away the Taliban regime in a matter of weeks, as it would the regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003, but far from bringing stability and democracy to Afghanistan the outcome has been one of constant warfare. Only yesterday hundreds of Nato troops, backed by warplanes and helicopter gunships, were involved in the offensive on the area, southwest of Kandahar city, that has been a centre of Taliban resistance. Nato boasted of killing more than 200 Taliban fighters but four Canadian soldiers also died, the day after the RAF lost 14 when its Nimrod crashed in disputed circumstances.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article1359854.ece