Right up there with "winning hearts and minds" was the slogan "shona ba shona"--meaning to work “shoulder to shoulder” with the Afghan army and police. The U.S. service members were mentors, and the two groups lived and fought together.

When a patrol went bad, like it did in Parwan Province in May 2010 and an Afghan commando was killed, commanders could give a small sum to the dead officer’s family, similar to the condolence payments given to civilians. The military first called them “martyr” payments, but later thought better of it and switched to "hero” payments.

At the height of U.S. involvement in Helmand province in May 2010, an Afghan National Army private was killed by an improvised explosive device in a highly contested area known as the Garmir District. The U.S. Marines paid his brother 119,500 Afghanis, or $2,495.

The typical payouts of $2,500, or sometimes $5,000, weren’t a lot of money. But that small token to the family--a recognition of their sacrifice--went a long way in a poor country like Afghanistan. The Afghan government is supposed to take care of wounded troops and the families of those killed, so a U.S. commander’s offering was extra help. The hero payment was not meant to be the sole death benefit a soldier’s family received.

As one unit put it, the money “temporarily helped bridge the income gap for the family who lost their loved one.”

Often there are sparse details about the incidents that led to the payments in the unclassified portion of the database. One for $1,177.48 to the family of an Afghan police commander was lumped in with payments for refreshments for a meeting with elders ($492.40), a door battered during a search ($107.04), and a child “killed during clearing operations” ($2,494.11).

An incident from October 2008, though, offers a glimpse of how at least one payment was used to honor an Afghan partner.  

In Khost province, a suicide bomber--or what the military, employing its best jargon, calls a “person borne improvised explosive device” (PBIED)-- blew himself up near the gate to a district center. A local Afghan on guard duty was injured in the attack. The commander gave the “awardee” $1,500 in a ceremony before “an audience” of U.S. and Afghan security forces.

“After the cash awarding, refreshments were served and a party was held afterward at the District Center.”

The distribution of hero payments in the database reveal a geographic disparity, with most clustered in the eastern part of the country even though the bulk of CERP money was spent  in the Helmand and Kandahar provinces in the south. According to the database, Regional Command East made about double the number of payments than Regional Command South in Kandahar did and Regional Command Southwest in Helmand did. Several U.S. commanders who were stationed in Kandahar say this wasn’t due to stinginess, but because the families of Afghan soldiers who fought in the south often were from other parts of the country, making it impractical logistically to deliver a payment.

That geographical advantage clearly made life easier for the families of soldiers in the east. One U.S. unit in that part of the country paid out  $78,000 in four months to the families of 38 Afghan soldiers who were killed or wounded.

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