One civilian, one year in Afghanistan: $570,000
Mary Kaszynski
Afghanistan Study Group
Less than 24 hours ago, a U.S. soldier went on a killing spree in southern Afghanistan, leaving 16 dead. The shooting will certainly shake Americans’ confidence in the U.S. strategy for Afghanistan—and public support for the war is already at record lows.
In fact, according to a recent poll, 60 percent of U.S. citizens believe the war in Afghanistan is not worth the costs. This is hardly surprising. At the same time that incidents like yesterday’s shooting and the recent Quran burnings highlight the failure of the current strategy, we are starting to get a better understanding of the real, long-term costs of the war.
Last week, Department of Defense Comptroller Robert Hale made headlines for pegging the cost of deploying one soldier to Afghanistan for one year at $850,000. The high price tag, which is a 40 percent increase over last year’s estimate, generated a lot of media attention.
One thing escaped everyone’s notice: soldiers aren’t the only Americans serving in Afghanistan. According to the Government Accountability Office, 1,142 U.S. civilians from the Department of State and other non-defense agencies are currently in Afghanistan.
Deploying a civilian is cheaper than deploying a soldier, but it is still expensive: up to $570,000 per year, according to the most recent estimate from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
$570,000 is a high price to pay, especially in a struggling economy. It’s more than ten times what the average American household makes in one week. Unfortunately there is no reason to expect that costs will go down any time soon. As the transition to local security forces progresses, the civilian presence in Afghanistan is ramping up. The number of U.S. civilians in Afghanistan has tripled over the past two years, at a cost of $2 billion.
U.S. troops may be leaving Afghanistan, however slowly, leaving local forces in charge of Afghan security by 2014. But U.S. taxpayers will still be footing the bill for another nation’s security. Let’s concentrate on our own.
2 Responses to One civilian, one year in Afghanistan: $570,000
Mary, for UAID personnel the cost is more like $1 million/y.
Salary $200,000
Corporate overhead x 2.5
local office, etc $500,000
Supplement 75% of base $150,000
Housing,travel, health $120,000
Driver,interpreter $ 20,000
Vehicle $120,000
Total 1,110,000
Add security at %20 222,000
$1,330,000! and they work maybe 2 weeks /month. Now no at all!
Mohamed, thanks for commenting. You bring up an interesting point: what exactly is included in that $570,000?
The SIGAR estimate (page 4 of the report) includes salary and other direct expenses. The salary/benefits category includes base, danger pay, post differential, benefits, etc. and comes to about $310,000. Other direct expenses includes training costs, deployment travel, medical evacuation, housing, etc. and comes to about $240,000. Adding in other categories that are not applicable to all positions, the total is $570,000.
SIGAR did not include in this estimate the costs that cannot be calculated on a per person basis, including security and infrastructure. I suspect that if these costs were included SIGAR’s estimate would look a lot like your estimate of $1 million per person.