Foreign workers killed on U.S. bases likely didn't get required compensation

Many foreign workers who were hurt or killed while working for Pentagon contractors on U.S. bases in Afghanistan most likely received little or none of the financial compensation required by the U.S. government, according to a report released this week by the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute.

Tens of thousands of workers from Nepal, the Philippines and other developing countries took jobs at U.S. military bases in Afghanistan. At their peak in 2012, they represented more than a third of the over 100,000 contract employees, according to the report, shared exclusively with NBC News.

Called third-country nationals, or TCNs, because they were not from the U.S. or Afghanistan, they worked as cafeteria workers, janitors and often armed guards for the bases. When a car bomb or other Taliban attack occurred, Afghans and TCN contractors “were far more likely to be killed or injured,” said the report. “A U.S. military veteran … told us that Americans sometimes referred to their Nepali colleagues as ‘flak jackets’ and ‘bait’ for suicide bombers.”