Afghan Pedophiles Get Free Pass From U.S. Military, Report Says
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On
5,753 occasions from 2010 to 2016, the United States military reported
accusations of “gross human rights abuses” by the Afghan military,
including many examples of child sexual abuse. If true, American law
required military aid to be cut off to the offending unit.
Not once did that happen.
That
was among the findings in an investigation into child sexual abuse by
the Afghan security forces and the supposed indifference of the American
military to the problem, according to a report released on Monday by the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, known as Sigar.
The
report, commissioned under the Obama administration, was considered so
explosive that it was originally marked “Secret/ No Foreign,” with the
recommendation that it remain classified until June 9, 2042. The report
was finished in June 2017, but it appears to have included data only
through 2016, before the Trump administration took office.
The
report released on Monday was heavily redacted, and at least in the
public portions it did little to answer questions about how prevalent
child sexual abuse was in the Afghan military and police, and how
commonly the American military looked the other way at the widespread
practice of bacha bazi, or “boy play,” in which some Afghan commanders
keep underage boys as sex slaves.
“Although
DOD and State have taken steps to identify and investigate child sexual
assault incidents, the full extent of these incidences may never be
known,” the report said, referring to the departments of Defense and
State.
Sigar said it had opened an investigation into bacha bazi at the request of Congress and in response to a 2015 New York Times article
that described the practice as “rampant.” The article said that
American soldiers who complained had their careers ruined by their
superiors, who had encouraged them to ignore the practice.
“DOD
and State only began efforts to address this issue after it was raised
by The New York Times,” said John F. Sopko, the special inspector
general. “And even after that story, the sufficiency of policies they’ve
put in place and the resources they’ve committed seem questionable.
When Congress passed the Leahy laws they prioritized the issue of gross
human rights violations. As our report clearly shows, both agencies
failed to live up to that task.”
A
former Special Forces officer, Capt. Dan Quinn, who beat up an Afghan
commander for keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave, said at
the time that he had been relieved of his command as a result. “We were
putting people into power who would do things that were worse than the
Taliban did,” said Captain Quinn, who has left the military.
Sgt. First Class Charles Martland, a highly decorated Green Beret, was forced out
of the military after beating up an Afghan local police commander in
Kunduz who was a child rapist. Sergeant Martland became incensed after
the Afghan commander abducted the boy, raped him, then beat up the boy’s
mother when she tried to rescue him. Congressional inquiries apparently
led to Sergeant Martland’s reinstatement.
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The
Times article also cited the suspicious death of Lance Cpl. Gregory
Buckley Jr., a United States Marine who was killed at a checkpoint where
he was stationed with a notorious commander who had a retinue of bacha
bazi boys. Corporal Buckley had complained about that commander and was
killed, along with two other Marines, by one of the commander’s boys.
The
Sigar report made no mention of the cases of Corporal Buckley, Captain
Quinn or Sergeant Martland, and it appeared to have interviewed only
three unnamed American soldiers who reported being aware of the
practice, which many soldiers and Afghan officials have told journalists they know to be widespread.
As
of Aug. 12, 2016, the Defense Department was investigating 75 instances
of gross human rights violations, seven involving child sexual assault,
but even Defense Department officials acknowledged that that was a
small portion of the total, the Sigar report said.
Under the Leahy Law,
United States military aid funds must be cut off to any foreign
military unit implicated in gross human rights violations, which
includes the practice of bacha bazi, with its enslavement and rape of
young boys. But another provision of American law, called the
“notwithstanding clause,” says that Afghan military aid should be
available “notwithstanding any other provision of law.”
The Sigar report said that the “notwithstanding clause” had been used repeatedly to evade cutting off military aid to Afghan units.
“DOD’s
continuing to provide assistance to units for which the department has
credible information of a gross violation of human rights undermines
efforts by U.S. government officials to engage with the Afghan
government on the importance of respect for human rights and rule of
law,” the report said. But it also said no evidence had been found that
American soldiers were ordered to look the other way as a matter of
policy, or that their commanders condoned the bacha bazi practice.
American military commanders in Afghanistan have repeatedly denied that there was any policy to condone child sexual abuse.
The
Sigar report recommended restricting the use of that “notwithstanding
clause” to evade the provisions of the Leahy Law, and a draft defense
appropriations bill supports that recommendation.
The practice is so widespread that at least one of the 2014 Afghan presidential candidates was a onetime C.I.A.-backed warlord, Gul Agha Shirzai, who was widely accused of being a pedophile who keeps bacha bazi boys.
President Ashraf Ghani vowed to end the practice in a 2015 speech,
but there have been few, if any, prosecutions by the Afghan authorities
for bacha bazi practices. Mr. Shirzai is now the minister of border and
tribal affairs in Mr. Ghani’s government.
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