After Being Found Alive Afghan Soldiers Are Told That They Have To Return Their 'Burial Money'

Nine of Noor ul-Haq’s 10 children at their home in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan. His eldest son, Zia, 23, center, traveled to Kabul to collect what he was wrongly told was his father’s body. Credit Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

New York Times: Found Alive, Soldiers Are Told: You Owe Us for Burials

BEHSUD, Afghanistan — The first time Noor ul-Haq died, his Afghan Army outpost was completely cut off by the Taliban on a bleak southern battleground. Hundreds of insurgent fighters swept in, and all that was left for the government to do was ship the corpses home.

His wife and their 10 children buried the body, piling rocks into a mound over the grave in a cemetery rapidly filling with other war dead here in Behsud District, in eastern Afghanistan. Like others, they were handed a $2,300 government payout — roughly a year’s salary for a soldier — to pay for the burial and see them through for a short while.

No one knows whom they put in that grave, but it was not Mr. Haq. He and another member of his unit, Imamuddin Ibrahimkhel, were among a very few soldiers who were taken prisoner by the Taliban last August and eventually freed by the Afghan Special Forces.

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WNU Editor: Good luck that you re not dead .... bad luck paying off the debt. But what struck me in this report are the government casualty rates in Helmand Province ....

.... In Helmand Province alone, where both men were stationed, at least 3,000 members of the Afghan Army and National Police have been killed in the past 11 months, Afghan officials say — nearly the total American toll through the entire war.

These numbers are unsustainable for the Afghan government and its military .... and the war by all accounts is now increasing significantly.