U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Afghan Allies’ Abuse of Boys

[applegrove]

U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Afghan Allies’ Abuse of Boys

By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN at the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/world/asia/us-soldiers-told-to-ignore-afghan-allies-abuse-of-boys.html

"SNIP............


KABUL, Afghanistan — In his last phone call home, Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr. told his father what was troubling him: From his bunk in southern Afghanistan, he could hear Afghan police officers sexually abusing boys they had brought to the base.

“At night we can hear them screaming, but we’re not allowed to do anything about it,” the Marine’s father, Gregory Buckley Sr., recalled his son telling him before he was shot to death at the base in 2012. He urged his son to tell his superiors. “My son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it’s their culture.”

Rampant sexual abuse of children has long been a problem in Afghanistan, particularly among armed commanders who dominate much of the rural landscape and can bully the population. The practice is called bacha bazi, literally “boy play,” and American soldiers and Marines have been instructed not to intervene — in some cases, not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases, according to interviews and court records.

.............

“The reason we were here is because we heard the terrible things the Taliban were doing to people, how they were taking away human rights,” said Dan Quinn, a former Special Forces captain who beat up an American-backed militia commander for keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave. “But we were putting people into power who would do things that were worse than the Taliban did — that was something village elders voiced to me.”


.............SNIP"

[tblue]

1. I wanna cuss so bad

I don't care what they're used to or what's culturally/legally/socially acceptable or whatever the heck excuse there is for doing something that abominable, nobody who abuses children can be any kind of ally! We have to step in whenever anyone is raped, period end of story.



I'm so upset i could scream.

[applegrove]

2. I know.

[Fumesucker]

3. How far up the chain of command does this policy come from?

[JeffHead]

4. We are all told to ignore the Saudis abuse of basically everything. ...

Whether it be women, children, Syrian refugees, the beheadings, the fact that 15 of the 19 911 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, etc. Because they are our friends with oily benefits. I don't think we'd give a shit about them if all they did was grow broccoli.

[Tipperary]

5. What a lovely culture and I suppose these monsters are all good Muslims.

[linuxman]

6. I've been telling folks who will listen for years.

Few did. Most reacted something along the lines of "that's islamaphobic horseshit", or similarly.

Oh well.