Found Alive, Soldiers Are Told: You Owe Us for Burials - nytimes

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.

Their families went through the trauma of the death notification, the sadness of burying bodies too damaged to be identifiable, then the sudden high of hearing their men had somehow lived.

Then came another blow: The government wanted the compensation money back. The men were told that they could always take another stint in the army to help, they said.

“They put us through doomsday,” Mr. Ibrahimkhel said. “My heart is crying because of what is going on here — what we went through, where we served, and all they care about is the funeral money.” - Read More at the NYT

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

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