The blood price: £20bn cost of Iraq and Afghan wars

The blood price
£20bn cost of wars revealed - but Con-Dems set to axe services rather than bring thetroops back

At least £9.24bn has now been spent in Iraq and £11.1bn in Afghanistan.

And on the eve of a Tory emergency "cuts" Budget that is set to cripple public services, the cost of fighting, diplomacy and reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq is expected to spiral upwards.

The £20bn figure includes £18bn for military operations, on top of the normal defence budget, as well as hundreds of millions of pounds spent on aid and security for British officials.

However the final price of operations since 2001 is said to be far higher once troops' salaries and the long-term care for the seriously wounded are added in.

Opponents of the wars highlighted the "obscene" price tag at a time when the government is slashing billions from public service budgets.

"Health workers, firefighters, teachers, police officers and many other public-service workers will now be paying for the legacy of this war with their jobs as services are cut to make up the cost of this disastrous mistake," said Labour's Hayes and Harlington MP John McDonnell.

"These figures confirm that the decision to invade Iraq was a chronic failure of judgement on every front."

Former London mayor Ken Livingstone said the cost of the conflicts was the same as that of scrapping student tuition fees in England for 10 years.

Royal United Services Institute defence analyst Professor Malcolm Chalmers said that about 30 per cent of Britain's total defence budget is currently devoted to operations in Afghanistan.

"There are long-term costs, but we don't know how big they are," he said.

The total cost will continue to rise until the 10,000 British troops still deployed in Afghanistan are withdrawn.

And the price looks set to spiral with the UN warning on Saturday that bomb attacks and deaths have soared this year.

"People will be astonished that the government has the cheek to call for public spending cuts when such an obscene amount has been spent in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Stop the War Coalition convener Lindsey German.

She added that the figure for the number of civilians killed in Afghanistan had not been recorded, but she said it could be tens of thousands, if not more.

The British death toll in Afghanistan since the start of operations in October 2001 currently stands at 299, while conservative estimates put Afghan civilian deaths at upwards of 10,000.

Stop the War will hold a protest outside Downing Street tomorrow, the day of Chancellor George Osborne's emergency Budget, to demand the withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan.

News of the huge cost of Britain's wars broke as Prime Minister David Cameron urged the public to express their appreciation for Britain's military "more loudly and more proudly" to mark Armed Forces Day next week.

The government's defence spending review will be discussed in the Commons on Monday.