Thread by @ClaireBerlinski

Prominently featured in the NYT magazine: an article that reports a Brown University study alleges, "At least 37 million people have been displaced as a direct result of the wars fought by the United States since Sept. 11, 2000."

It says little about the study itself, save to say that it may well be an undercount. It concludes with this quote from the study's author:

I presume most people won't look at the study. But if you do, you'll find that it leaves much to be desired, methodologically.

The authors are right to draw attention to this. They're right that displacement in war is a horror.

They're right that the prospect of causing mass displacement should weigh heavily in the minds of US policymakers. They're right that short of causing death or permanent injury, it's one of the greatests horror we can inflict.

The trauma of losing your home, your belongings, your community, your language, your family, your village or even your city or your country--emotionally, economically, sociologically--is incalculable.

However.

They've calculated the number of people "displaced as a direct result of the wars fought by the United States" by asking, "Was the United States involved in Country X," and "How many fled Country X, either to another part of X or outside it?"

Although they explicitly deny that they're saying the US and only the US is to blame for this displacement, they are, in fact, saying just that.

"Between2010 and2019," they note, "the total numberofrefugees and IDPs globally has nearly doubled from 41million to 79.5 million."

If we use the lower number, their argument would suggest that the US is the why almost *all* of the world's refugees and IDPs are displaced.

But this just isn't so.

They've assumed that if the US military is in Country X, that is why people are fleeing.

This is absurd. The US military doesn't, as a rule, go to war in peaceful countries.

Usually, if we send the US military to Country X, it's because there are some *very* serious problems in Country X to begin with.

So, e.g., they count 7.1 million displaced as people whom "the US post-9/11 wars have forcibly displaced."

Charitably, this is misleading.

The authors note, correctly, that at least half of Syria’spre-war population has been displaced. (They use the figure 13.3 million; I would guess it is even higher.) They say they considered including *all* of Syria's refugees and IDPs on their list--

on the grounds that "the US war in Iraq and its birthing ofthe Islamic State have played [a role] in shaping theSyrian civil war."

But they at least thought better of that,

and allowed that "the Syrian government, rebel forces, foreign militants, and Russian, Turkish, and other foreign militaries" might have played some causal role.

Instead, they count the displaced from "five Syrian provinces where US forces have fought and operated since 2014."

Why? They don't say. But specifically: If you were displaced from Aleppo, Hasakeh, Raqqa, Deir-ez-Zor, and
Homs, they attribute this to the US's involvement. (Pretty much all of Syria, that is, except Damascus, Idlib, Latakia, and Tartus.)

The claim is perverse, at best.

It's unclear how many US troops are or have been in Syria; Trump claimed to be withdrawing them, then changed his mind and said they were there to "keep the oil." But whether it's none or, much more likely, about 2,500 (at the highest point),

it has been nowhere near enough.

"Not enough to stop the unrelenting slaughter" is the way I think of it, but if you're of the view that people only become displaced because US troops are in the vicinity, it's still not enough to explain the data.

You can't displace 7.1 million Syrians with 2,000 US troops--unless you use those troops to drop chemical weapons and barrel bombs on densely populated cities. And indeed, one party to this conflict most certainly did that--but it wasn't the US.

So the authors are unclear about the mechanism by which US troops caused this displacement--and they have to be, because there's no plausible mechanism.

It *is* true--and fair to note, as they do, that the battle to take back Raqqa resulted in 470,000 displaced.

"That's awful," thinks the reader. "Why would the US do that to peaceful Raqqa? Raqqa was a paradise until we leveled it, wasn't it?"

Well, no. Raqqa was the administrative headquarters of ISIS's caliphate. Remember that 2014 "Flames of War" video?

The one that showed Syrian prisoners digging their own graves, and then showed ISIS shooting them all in the back of the head? There were--to say the least--many reasons for Syrians to flee Raqqa, and until we began bombing it, none of them involved the US.

Such as, for example, the prospect of being thrown off a tall building for homosexuality, or sold into slavery, or just killed outright. Christians once made up 10% of the city's population. They fled before the US arrived.

Then France--retaliating for a string of terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 129 people--proceeded nearly to level the place: web.archive.org/web/2015111600…

nytimes.com/2015/11/16/wor…

Only then did the US get involved--and yes, we did indeed level what remained, and massive displacement ensued. bbc.com/news/world-mid…

"But US troops are the only bad thing in the world, so surely things were fine after we left, right?"

Well, no. In the first place, "we" weren't there. We used the SDF as our ground troops. Not necessarily the best strategy, but since we'd done this, you'd think we wouldn't abandon them.

But we did.

As soon as Trump announced the US was pulling out of the region, ISIS recommenced suicide bombings in Raqqa; Turkey invaded and--since we'd left them no choice--the SDF cut a deal with Assad.

So...there were many reasons people fled Raqqa.
But the US was not high among them.

"Displaced Syrians."