Cost of wars

UK's £20bn bill for fighting Iraq and Afghan wars

By Gerri Peev

Last updated at 12:33 PM on 21st June 2010

The bill includes £18billion for military operations as well as paying for overseas development and aid.

However the £20.34billion total, revealed for the first time in official Whitehall figures, does not include the salaries of soldiers or paying for their long-term injuries and mental health care.
 

It is also on top of the £35billion annual defence budget.

Afghanistan, where operations began in October 2001, has cost more than Iraq to finance, with £11.1billion spent on the conflict so far.

The total includes £1.2billion on humanitarian, reconstruction and development aid.
 

With no withdrawal date from Afghanistan for Britain's 10,000 troops, the costs are set to rise further.
 

Former Chancellor Alistair Darling revealed in March that £4billion had been set aside for Afghanistan this year.

Fighting the war in Iraq cost more than £8.2billion, while £557million was given to the country-for development.
 

The Foreign Office also spent £283million on diplomacy in Iraq and Whitehall spent a further £147million on other programmes such as the 'conflict prevention pool'.

It took the total bill for Iraq, which was invaded in March 2003 and where combat operations ended in April last year, to £9.24billion.
 

Critics of the wars condemned the figures. Former London mayor Ken Livingstone said the cost of the war in Afghanistan would have funded free tuition in English universities for ten years.

But defence experts argued that the costs were bound to be high.

Professor Malcolm Chalmers, a defence analyst with the Royal United Services Institute, said:

'They have been long and sustained operations in difficult geographical locations.
 

'Simply maintaining thousands of people in such a location takes a lot of money on logistics before you have even started.'

The true cost of the war will become clear only in the decades to come when troops suffering long-term mental and physical injuries seek treatment.
 

General Sir David Richards

General Sir David Richards is tipped to become the new head of the Armed Forces after impressing David Cameron with his call for urgent change in Afghanistan.
 

The country's top general is set to become the new Chief of the Defence Staff in the autumn when Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup stands down.
 

General Richards, who has 40 years of military experience, has called for an end to suggestions that Britain will pull out of Afghanistan imminently.
 

He wants more 'boots on the ground' in the country.
 

His appointment could signal a longer haul in Afghanistan for troops, as he has called for Nato allies to help build schools and clinics and create good local governance in volatile Helmand province.