Money as an Apology

Commanders regularly handed out money to say “I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry for wounding your son. I’m sorry for breaking your fence. I’m sorry for killing your cow.

With CERP, the collateral damage of war is reduced to financial calculations. Lives became line items.

One entry lists 20 jargon-rich payouts, including the wounded or killed among damage to metal doors, wheat fields and tractors:

“Battle Damage Son shot in Head, 5M Wall Sangin PAID 130,000 $2,927.27”

“Battle Damage (1) Brother killed in Air Strike Sangin PAID 110,000 $2,476.92”

The same financial guidelines that are part of the CERP rules known officially as “Money as a Weapons System Afghanistan” cover the loss of goods and lives--chickens or children. Battle damage and condolence payments are grouped in one category with the same monetary limit. Most commanders “can approve up to $2.5K per person or damaged property.” But for extraordinary circumstances, up to $5,000, or even $10,000, could be approved by higher ups.

The military says the payments aren’t intended to put a value on a life. Rather the money is meant as a gesture. One unit described a payment as “bringing a compassionate face to the U.S. Military.” And for the average Afghan, who lives on the equivalent of about $50 per month, a payment of $2,500 could cover about four years of lost wages for a family.

“There are so many wasteful and bad ways that CERP money has been spent, this is probably one of better ways to spend money,” said William Byrd, a development economist and Afghanistan expert with The United States Institute of Peace.

One condolence payment in the CERP database gave no details about what happened, but noted a satisfactory conclusion: “Great family is happy.”

Still, equating the loss of material belongings with that of human life is jarring.

In Khost in 2009, a civilian family got caught between U.S. troops and insurgents. One person was killed, five were injured and a car was destroyed. “Payment should be paid in the amount of $2,500 for the [killed in action], $1,500 for each [wounded in action], and $2,500 for the destroyed vehicle,” the unit reported in the CERP database.

In Helmand, a dead camel fetched $2,000. But livestock doesn’t always garner so much. One farmer received just $1 ,723.38 after three of his cows, three goats and a chicken were killed in a firefight.

Sometimes the payments are for exceptional losses. In an airstrike gone awry in 2011, a 30-year-old Afghan man was killed, along with his wife and four of his children, ages 2 to 8. Two daughters, ages 3 and 5, were wounded, but alive. The military paid the man’s brother $40,000 -- $5,000 for each person.

In a brief interview, the commander who made that payment, now-Army Col. William Johnson, said the CERP money certainly helped to try to make amends. But he asked, “What is ever sufficient when there’s a loss of life like that?”

CERP payments were prioritized differently by individual commanders, sometimes resulting in seemingly capricious variations.

In 2009, U.S troops dropped a 500-pound bomb on a home belonging to an important local elder and his family of 11. Although no one was killed, the house was destroyed. It was the type of case CERP was designed for: quickly fixing an urgent problem that could affect goodwill. As the unit explained in its CERP report, pro-Afghan government “relationships that have been established in the village would quickly deteriorate and give the insurgents the opportunity to exploit this situation in their favor,” if the military didn’t help the elder rebuild.

The military paid him $72,916, nearly $33,000 more than it paid in the case involving the 2011 airstrike that left six dead and two injured.

As the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan winds down, CERP money is being spent at a much lower rate, but the Pentagon has said condolence and battle damage payments will continue to be a primary use for the money.