In March 2014, the U.S. military paid an Afghan man just over $1,000 to compensate for killing his civilian son in an operation near the border with Iran, according to U.S. military records released to Reuters.
Six months later, another Afghan father was given $10,000 by the U.S. military after his child, also a civilian, was killed in an American-led military operation in the same province.
And 68-year-old Haji Allah Dad lost 20 relatives, including his brother and sister-in-law, in a U.S. and Afghan special forces operation near the northern city of Kunduz last November.
Allah Dad said he received no money from the U.S. military, though he did get compensation from the Afghan government.
Nearly 16 years since invading Afghanistan, the United States has no standardized process for making compensation payments to the families of thousands of Afghan civilians killed or injured in U.S.-led military operations.
It first started paying the families of Afghan victims as a way to counter Taliban militants who were doing the same.
America’s approach to compensation is arbitrary by design as it tries to negotiate Afghanistan’s cultural and regional sensitivities as a foreign military force.
But civil activists say the system is unfair and confusing for often poor and uneducated Afghans.
A Pentagon spokesman said the military leaves the decision on how much to pay to commanders on the ground because they are best positioned to judge the incidents.
“Condolence payments in Afghanistan are based on cultural norms of the local area, advice from Afghan partners, and the circumstances of the event,” said spokesman Adam Stump.
