U.S. Soldiers told to ignore Sexual abuse of boys by Afghan Allies

I don’t know what it means for something to be “our base” in Afghanistan, but if it’s some area we have authority over, I do not believe that those in authority would knowingly allow children to be raped there.

Well, apparently they do allow it and it’s hard to believe they wouldn’t know.

And you know this, how…? Note: There is nothing in the liked article that says this is a “our base”, if there is even such a thing.

The question is what are the limits of US authority over Afghanistan nationals and over operations at facilities where US military personnel are operating. If this is “apparent” to you BG maybe you could share your knowledge and give us some external citations.

I’ve been looking through various documents covering US-Afghanistan relations, going back the last half decade or so and I can’t find anything specifically authorizing any policing or security activities other than those aimed at counterterrorism. It is not at all clear to me that there is at this time any territory in the country other than our embassy that is truly subject to US law or policy, and it’s also unclear when and how various US built military installations (including Bagram Airbase) have been or will be fully turned over to Afghanistan.

What is very clear, however, is that all along the line of “enduring” and “bilateral” agreements (and the confusing timing of document supersession during the continuous negotiations), the sovereignty of Afghanistan and it’s partnership with the US have been emphasized.

Now, the Afghanistan government has made a lot of promises regarding human rights, but I’ve not found any mention of willingness to relegate authority over Afghan citizens to the US. If anyone has a trustworthy cite that shows such authority, please share it.

And, of course, IF (that’s a big if) this is occurring under the authority of the US, no one here is going to defend such actions.

I really wish that could go without saying, but I guess it can’t.

Really? Did you have anyone in particular in mind? And just to be clear, we’re talking about a hypothetical in which it was US policy to allow a Bacha Bazi ring to be run at a facility where US commanders were ultimately in charge. You think some posters here would NOT condemn that?

No, I think some posters here would assume that anyone arguing against direct action by US soldiers would also not condemn complicity from US commanders in child rape.

I recall once griping about some local cultural thing and was informed that I was just a guest in their country. I then asked what did I have to do to get my ass PNGed* out of their country and was told “At ease.”

*PNGed = declared Persona Non Grata

The problem with “culture” is not that you have to respect everything another culture does. It’s that creating change in a culture is not easy, and the “righteous foreigner telling everyone they are wrong” model has been proven to fail, time and time again. It may feel good for you, but it doesn’t fix a thing. We’ve been trying it for hundreds of years.

Let’s look at the US. How do we deal with child abuse?

We have a welfare and social services system to make sure nobody has to sell their kids.

We have a foster care system, victims advocates, family courts, child psychologists, mandated reporters and a whole suite of systems and services to get kids out of bad situations and ensure that they get the help they need and can stay safe.

We have a fair police and justice system. We have functioning prisons, and a sex offender registry. We have background checks and rules for contact with children.

We have public awareness campaigns. Our schools teach our kids how to get help if someone is making them uncomfortable. Child abuse is an active part of our national dialog.

Our success in battling child abuse is not that we are superior beings or we are better at macho posturing. It’s that we have set up an enormously comprehensive system of institutions designed to prevent it. In places where those institutions fail- such as in isolated FLDS communities- child abuse becomes common.

It’s not something you can just fix by snapping your fingers.

The problem is that there is no respectable way for a male to have sex with a female outside of marriage in Afghanistan. And young, poor guys have no decent chance of getting married. Masturbation is forbidden, illicit affairs with women or men will get you killed, girl children are protected and messing with one will also get you killed. Boys are not “men” so having sex with them doesn’t make you a homosexual by Afghan rules, they are really the only culturally acceptable option.

Changing it requires either a massive change on how women are raised/protected/married off, or possibly civil service sex workers.

Some Afghan guys are lucky enough to get married early, some rich enough to travel to cities for prostitutes; everyone else either goes celibate until marriage or has sex with young boys.

Anecdotal data; a madrassa raided when I was there, which had about 40 8-10 year old boys in residence and which adult Taliban used to hide out, had a 5 gallon container of “surgical” lube in a closet.

This isn’t a problem that a few arrests is going to change. In Afghanistan law enforcement is building from nothing. Here we have this large infrastructure, social programs, and legal codes devoted to the preventing child sexual abuse, there are still problems and pedophile rings arrested sometimes.

Or possibly just a decent campaign to encourage masturbation (some unrestricted internet access or even just distribution the Victoria’s Secret catalogs and lube would work wonders)

The point is that they are ordering soldiers to ignore it. They are not coming up with alternative plans on how to deal with it. So that entire line of thought is a red herring. There’s a difference between strategically falling back to deal with it later, and turning a blind eye. The latter appears to be what is going on.

That’s what compels the soldier to act, even if what they do won’t be all that effective. It is better to do something and fail than to be just as guilty as the child molesters because you didn’t try to stop it. And one thing that you can do is what is already being done. Publicize the hell out of it. Make the military look horrible. See if you can decrease recruitment numbers.

No, it probably won’t be all that successful. That’s irrelevant if it’s all you can do.

If you end up making things worse, yes, it’s to develop a coordinated response that has a chance of helping than going all Rambo just to assuage your ego.

There is a real simple way I think to solve this issue as far as the USA goes, can’t fix local culture or attitudes or lax law enforcement, but you can control USA bases.

No minors allowed on base, or how about no local civilians allowed on base? Seems simple, fixes the issue, tada.

I find it hard to believe if the USA was training local military anywhere they allow a entourage of local civilian of age hookers to stay and sleep on base with the local trainees, so why is this different? Or does the USA usually allow local trainees to have civilians guests stay on base?

NM it appears these are Afghan bases and the US soldiers are essentially guests there to train, aside from negative publicity there really isn’t anything to be done.

NM? Can you link to your source for this info?

It occurs to me that if this really is an old and widespread cultural practice, then there must be a statistically significant number of adult men in Afghanistan who were forcibly buggered as boys, and that it has been so in every generation for centuries.

What effect does that have, I wonder, on the non-sexual aspects of a society’s collective psyche?

Some one with better Google-fu than moi could probably find these, but I remember in the early days after 9/11 several articles written about the problem of sexual abuse of young boys as a serious contributor to the mentality that creates suicide bombers.