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U.S. pays Afghan villagers for killings
In a picture taken on Sept. 30, 2011 Afghan villagers look on as a U.S. soldier from HHB 3-7 Field Artillery Regiment 3rd Bct 25th ID walks past during a mission in Turkham Nangarhar, bordering Pakistan. The U.S. government regularly pays families for civilian deaths in combat.
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Nancy Marshall-Genzer: Congress has rules for these condolence payments. First established when a U.S. service member killed a German civilian. After World War Two. That’s when Congress passed the Foreign Claims Act. Which covers payments for civilian deaths outside of combat. If civilians are killed in combat, US commanders can dip into slush funds. Set up by Congress during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sarah Holewinski heads the group, Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict. She says we’re making more condolence payments now than ever. Partly because they’re an ingrained part of Iraqi and Afghan culture. When Iraqis make these payments among themselves, they call them blood money.
Sarah Holewinski: Blood money is -- it’s almost a peace negotiation. OK -- now we’ve settled it. We’re fine. We’re moving on with our lives.
But the condolence payments are just a way for the U.S. to say sorry. And there’s no guarantee of forgiveness.
Todd Harrison is with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He says the U.S. is not saying that Staff Sergeant Robert Bales is guilty of the shootings.
Todd Harrison: Because that could jeopardize the trial. If the US government is, on one hand, admitting our person did this and, on the other hand, trying to give the person a fair trial to determine whether or not they did it.
It’s not clear how the U.S. military decides what a fair payment is. The norm for a civilian death in Iraq or Afghanistan is about $2,500. So the $50,000 settlements in Afghanistan are way above average.
Lawrence Korb is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
Lawrence Korb: I think it was high because of the atrocities and the scope of this.
The Pentagon isn’t saying how the money was handed out. Sarah Holewinski says the Afghan civilians probably got cash. And not U.S. dollars. But stacks of local currency.
Sarah Holewinski: I would suspect it would take a truck to get it over to the families. There must have been a more discrete way that the U.S. military did this.
But the Pentagon won’t give details. Or say what it’s spent on these payments. Holewinski only knows of one estimate from about six years ago. When the inspector general for Iraq reported we were spending about $14 million a year in condolence money.
In Washington, I’m Nancy Marshall-Genzer for Marketplace.
A light slap on the wrist for Nancy Marshall-Genzer for the quote she chose to lead her story with. The Afghanistan affair aside, "Blood Money" is already an extremely loaded term, and her using it to lead the story definitely blurred the line between journalism and editorializing.
The worst part of the quote is that Ms. Holewinski uses passive voice (the bane of English teachers everywhere) to falsely add a sense of authority to her statement. "It's called blood money". Okay, WHO calls it blood money? Just her?
The quote speaks with an authority not necessarily earned. A quick glance at Wikipedia shows that Holewinski's group did some phenomenal work under their original founder (Marla Ruzicka), but Holewinski is not Ms. Ruzicka, and shouldn't speak as if she has the same credibility.
(Ms. Ruzicka, of course, has credibility in spades, having given her life in Iraq in 2005 for her work, but a cursory search online revealed no examples of her having used that term for payments to civilian victims.)
Thankfully, the rest of the story is solid and informative. I did not expect that payments for civilian casualties were typically so low (only $2500?), nor that there would be logistical issues (US currency vs local currency, the difficulties of transferring that much physical money, etc) involved with the process.
