Soldiers negotiate Afgh damage payments

BADULA QULP, Afghanistan (AP) - The battalion commander pondered the question: How much is a tree worth?

Warrior one day, haggler the next. Lt. Col. Burton Shields was talking to an Afghan farmer who said the Americans had damaged five trees on his property in an operation against the Taliban near the town of Marjah, where NATO forces are fighting insurgent holdouts.

The farmer, an elderly man with a beard and turban, wanted compensation.

"What's a fair price for five trees? I don't know. How much is a tree worth?" Shields mused. Then, he couldn't resist: "Money doesn't grow on trees."

Just the night before, Shields of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was surrounded by attentive officers in uniform in a tent on a patrol base, plotting military strategy and assessing the threat of hidden bombs and insurgent infiltration.

The next day, Thursday, the men around him were Afghan elders, faces lined by decades of sun and wind, a few wearing battered army jackets over their robes, relics of past wars.

The farmer, Habibullah, got 30,000 Afghanis, or $600, for his trees. He had asked for another $200, but Shields and his money men -- Staff. Sgt. Christopher Wooton and 1st Lt. Daniel Hickok -- bargained low in the best bazaar tradition. Rules of thumb: shave off up to 40 percent, or more, of an opening bid from an aggrieved villager and lean heavily on Afghan commanders as "honest brokers."

Still, the Afghans overall gave the Americans a run for their money. The troops parted with more than $10,000 as part of a plan to compensate civilians for damage to crops and compounds, and also injuries -- whether caused by the Taliban or not -- after more than two weeks of combat.

The aim: Show the goodwill of NATO forces, and persuade the local population to support the Western-backed government.

"I assume everyone's trying to take us for as much as they can get," said Shields, clutching a stack of handwritten claim forms. "The Afghan system is kind of inflated."

He paid $5,000 to the leaders of a village whose mosque was destroyed by an American missile that targeted an insurgent allegedly hiding in the building. He paid $50 to a man whose 1,000-square-meter (quarter-acre) patch of land was torn up by Stryker infantry vehicles, which often go off-road to avoid improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, that the Taliban plants on, under or beside roads.

The man had been growing poppy, the opium-bearing flower that provides the Taliban with a major source of funding in southern Afghanistan. His case revealed the line between strict policy and hard reality.

"We don't pay for poppy, sir," said Wooton, of Richmond, Virginia. Hickok, of Puyallup, Washington, sat beside him, plucking fresh bank notes from a black zip-up bag.

"Depends on how you look at it, I guess," said Shields. "We could be paying for damage to the land, but not for the poppy."

Later, the commander of 4th Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment of the 5th Stryker Brigade explained, saying the farmer likely had no alternative to poppy-growing until the government could organize seed distribution for legitimate crops.

With the help of a Pashto-speaking translator, Wooton alternated between stiff courtesy -- "I hope your harvest is a good one this year" -- and exasperation -- "This isn't a money stop. Tell him I want $1,000 too, but I just can't take it."

He was ever-mindful of security. The Afghans lined up for payouts after a meeting beside a compound with the chief of staff of the district administrator, who was absent from the region until NATO troops rolled in. In keeping with local sensitivities, the frisking of arrivals was left to Afghan troops, but American soldiers wore flak jackets, carried weapons, and most kept their helmets on.

"Tell him he can't stand behind me. He needs to move on," Wooton said as an Afghan man circled in the background.

A large explosion in the distance forced a pause in the proceedings. The report came that a building had blown up while insurgents were building a bomb.

"Very good," said Shields. He and the top Afghan commander in the area, Maj. Abdul Jalal, shared a fist-bump.

As the haggling progressed, Sgt. 1st Class Joshua Morgan of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, sat on a box and said villagers had offered to sell him a goat for $200, a steep price compared with the $35 he paid while deployed in another area of southern Afghanistan.

Morgan said he wanted to trap one of the many weasels he had seen on this deployment. "If it's got a heartbeat, I'll eat it. I'm from Tennessee."