Even as a child I knew to pick my friends wisely. Instead, Campbell said he’s taken the time to speak to President Ashraf Ghani about the problem.
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But after a decade of training with US forces, it seems some Afghan commanders are continuing the abuse unchecked.
While reports of the Pentagon’s indulgent attitude toward the practice of “bacha bazi“, or “boy play” in Afghanistan surfaced in the past, the New York Times revealed that when some US service members intervened, they were punished by the Pentagon for doing so.
American soldiers did not volunteer to risk their lives to be complicit in the sexual abuse of children. But among American military personnel and civilians who served in Afghanistan, it was well known that many wealthy and prominent Afghans rape boys, often making them dress up as women and dance at gatherings during which they are assaulted – and that Western officials often turned a blind eye to the practice for fear of alienating allies.
“At night we can hear them screaming, but we’re not allowed to do anything about it,” Gregory Buckley Sr., the Marine’s father, recalled his son telling him before he was shot to death at an Afghan base in 2012.
“The reason we were here is because we heard the awful things the Taliban were doing to people, how they were taking away human rights…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”, he said.
A number of U.S. House and Senate members have asked the Army about Martland’s case. First Class Charles Martland, who assisted Captain Quinn in beating up the alleged child abuser, is now resisting being kicked out of the army. Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis called the issue “fundamentally an Afghan law enforcement matter and those are reports that are given to the Afghan government”. He dodged. “For the rules of engagement and the kind of structure that’s in place to guide the relationship between the United States and Afghan members of the military, I’d refer you to the Department of Defense for that”, Earnest said – as if his boss isn’t the commander in chief and has no influence over such sweeping and influential policies.
Col. Tribus said an exception is when child sexual abuse is being used as a weapon of war.
Another murdered his 12-year-old daughter for kissing a boy.
No one has ever shown that it was top-down USA “policy” 11 years ago to abuse Iraqi prisoners. The other 185 countries the USA sent aid to in 2012 split about $30 billion.
Afghan security forces include the national army and police force.
Andrew Bacevich, emeritus professor of history and worldwide relations at Boston University, says the situation highlights the unacknowledged reality of current U.S. policy in Afghanistan.
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But his most famous fight came against an American “ally”.
