Our Condolences, Afghanistan

by Cora Currier, Josh Begley, and Margot Williams
click here for original article

How much is a life worth? A decade of war in Afghanistan has left a legacy of death and destruction for the Afghan people, often at the hands of U.S. forces. Attaching a dollar figure to that suffering may be difficult, but that’s precisely what the U.S. military has done.

The Intercept obtained records for thousands of compensation payments made by the U.S. between 2003 and 2013. Some are “condolence payments” for innocents killed or injured in combat operations, while others are for a wide variety of damages — a child’s bicycle run over, an onion field crushed, twenty-one sheep killed in rocket fire. The payments presented here are not a comprehensive accounting of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, but scrolling through these mundane indignities can offer a small window into thousands of fractured lives and personal tragedies.

Because the data is incomplete, the graphic includes only a selection of the records we obtained. For more, see our accompanying story.

How much is a life worth? A decade of war in Afghanistan has left a legacy of death and destruction for the Afghan people, often at the hands of U.S. forces. Attaching a dollar figure to that suffering may be difficult, but that’s precisely what the U.S. military has done.

The Intercept obtained records for thousands of compensation payments made by the U.S. between 2003 and 2013. Some are “condolence payments” for innocents killed or injured in combat operations, while others are for a wide variety of damages — a child’s bicycle run over, an onion field crushed, twenty-one sheep killed in rocket fire. The payments presented here are not a comprehensive accounting of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, but scrolling through these mundane indignities can offer a small window into thousands of fractured lives and personal tragedies.

Because the data is incomplete, the graphic includes only a selection of the records we obtained. For more, see our accompanying story.

$250
U.S. forces drove through and damaged his garden
NANGARHAR

$1,799
Coalition forces shot and killed his 8 sheep
LAGHMAN

$57
U.S. Army soldier took his jacket
KABUL

$106
Controlled detonation broke 8 windows in mosque
LOGAR

$20,000
Convoy hit them head on, killing their 5 y/o daughter
PARWAN

$807
House ransacked mistakenly
HELMAND

click for full graphic

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