Taxpayers foot bill for war blood money

Daily Telegraph ^ | 15th June 2009 | Ian McPhedran

[naturalman1975]

TAXPAYERS have paid out more than $350,000 in "honour payments" to families of locals accidentally killed or injured by Australian troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dozens of non-combatants have been shot by Diggers since the Iraq campaign began in April 2003.

Rapid "act of grace" payments can prevent revenge attacks. Defence refuses to divulge how much is paid to each family but has told The Daily Telegraph $126,442 had so far been paid out to Afghani families.

The amount covers more than 20 individuals for an average of about $6000 each. The overall figure for Iraq is $216,417 for about 10 incidents and could climb before Australia's combat involvement in Iraq finally ceases next month.

A security detail (SECDET) of about 100 troops will remain to secure the Australian embassy.

Insurgents often use civilians as human shields against coalition forces making counter-attacks risky.

Local people have also been shot for failing to stop at checkpoints or for driving aggressively near Australian escorted high-speed convoys.

The most recent payments went to the families of three dead Afghans and another eight people injured during a firefight between Australian forces and Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan's Oruzgan Province.

[jprobst]

Oddly enough it seems to work alright in Iraq. They place a different value on a human life. Why do you think they dont have that much trouble finding suicide bombers? I dont think we should be paying for the Aussie’s mistakes. I do think it is a rather creative solution to a complex problem. If you piss off an entire community you can just about guarantee they will let the bad guys in to fight us. If you at least make the gesture to make things “right” the community will probably respect that. Hopefully that means less money spent on new MRAPs that get blown up- or worse a solder.
- Al Anbar, Iraq 06-07