Casualties in the Third World

Loss of life caused by American invasions or by US-backed and funded regimes since 1960

It is very difficult to assess the exact number of non-US casualties in any war. The United States will often attempt to keep the media away until the action is over and bodies have been buried, and the media usually describe a "clean" war. The following figures are from various sources. Where sources differ greatly, I have chosen a figure somewhere in the middle. It is even more difficult to split the number of dead into military and civilians, so I have not attempted this. Probably more than 80% of the casualties were civilians.

The statistics are meant to give an idea of the scale of American intervention in the Third World, and unfortunately, the number of human beings killed is a sort of index. The additional misery caused by the destruction of the infrastructure, environmental damage, cancer caused by depleted uranium, unexploded bombs, displacement, loss of housing and income, physical injury, hunger, and psychological trauma is very real, though not so easy to quantify. Sanctions can be even crueller than wars, causing many slow deaths due to lack of medical facilities, the breakdown of infrastructure such as water processing plants, and starvation. The effects are rarely reported in the Western media.

Country	Period	US military deaths	"enemy" deaths	Description
Vietnam	1961 - 1975	56,865	3,000,000	US invasion and bombing
Guatemala	1962 - 1996	0	200,000	US-backed military regime
Indonesia	1965	0	1,000,000	US-backed military coup
Laos	1965 - 1973	726	350,000	US bombing
Cambodia	1969 - 1975	521	600,000	US bombing
Chile	1973 - 1990	0	3,000	US-backed military coup
East Timor	1975 - 1999	0	200,000	US-backed invasion by Indonesia
Mozambique	1979 - 1989	0	1,000,000	US- and South Africa-backed Renamo
El Salvador	1981 - 1992	21	80,000	US-backed military regime
Nicaragua	1982 - 1988	0	30,000	US-backed Contras and embargo
Lebanon	1982 - 1998	0	23,000	US-backed invasion by Israel
Sudan	1983	0	30,000	US bombing
Grenada	1983	16	500	US invasion (Operation Urgent Fury)
Turkey	1984 - 1997	0	30,000	US-backed operations against Kurds
Libya	1986	2	10,000	US bombing (Operation El Dorado Canyon) and sanctions
Angola	1986 - 1994	0	500,000	US- and South African-backed terrorism
Panama	1989	23	4,000	US invasion (Operation Just Cause)
Iraq	1991 - 2003	148	1,200,000	US-led bombing, invasion and sanctions
Iraq	2003 -	2,500	100,000	US-led bombing and invasion
Afghanistan	2001 -	300	5,000	US-led bombing and invasion
Total	1961 -	61,122	8,365,500