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Thread: US Soldiers Told to Ignore Afghan Allies' Abuse of Boys

  1. #1

    US Soldiers Told to Ignore Afghan Allies' Abuse of Boys

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/wo...boys.html?_r=0


    By JOSEPH GOLDSTEINSEPT. 20, 2015

    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.”
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    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.
    Photo
    Gregory Buckley Sr. believes the policy of looking the other way was a factor in his son's killing. Credit Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

    The policy has endured as American forces have recruited and organized Afghan militias to help hold territory against the Taliban. But soldiers and Marines have been increasingly troubled that instead of weeding out pedophiles, the American military was arming them in some cases and placing them as the commanders of villages — and doing little when they began abusing children.

    “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.”

    The policy of instructing soldiers to ignore child sexual abuse by their Afghan allies is coming under new scrutiny, particularly as it emerges that service members like Captain Quinn have faced discipline, even career ruin, for disobeying it.

    After the beating, the Army relieved Captain Quinn of his command and pulled him from Afghanistan. He has since left the military.

    Four years later, the Army is also trying to forcibly retire Sgt. First Class Charles Martland, a Special Forces member who joined Captain Quinn in beating up the commander.

    “The Army contends that Martland and others should have looked the other way (a contention that I believe is nonsense),” Representative Duncan Hunter, a California Republican who hopes to save Sergeant Martland’s career, wrote last week to the Pentagon’s inspector general.

    In Sergeant Martland’s case, the Army said it could not comment because of the Privacy Act.

    When asked about American military policy, the spokesman for the American command in Afghanistan, Col. Brian Tribus, wrote in an email: “Generally, allegations of child sexual abuse by Afghan military or police personnel would be a matter of domestic Afghan criminal law.” He added that “there would be no express requirement that U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan report it.” An exception, he said, is when rape is being used as a weapon of war.

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    The American policy of nonintervention is intended to maintain good relations with the Afghan police and militia units the United States has trained to fight the Taliban. It also reflects a reluctance to impose cultural values in a country where pederasty is rife, particularly among powerful men, for whom being surrounded by young teenagers can be a mark of social status.

    Some soldiers believed that the policy made sense, even if they were personally distressed at the sexual predation they witnessed or heard about.

    “The bigger picture was fighting the Taliban,” a former Marine lance corporal reflected. “It wasn’t to stop molestation.”

    Still, the former lance corporal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid offending fellow Marines, recalled feeling sickened the day he entered a room on a base and saw three or four men lying on the floor with children between them. “I’m not a hundred percent sure what was happening under the sheet, but I have a pretty good idea of what was going on,” he said.

    But the American policy of treating child sexual abuse as a cultural issue has often alienated the villages whose children are being preyed upon. The pitfalls of the policy emerged clearly as American Special Forces soldiers began to form Afghan Local Police militias to hold villages that American forces had retaken from the Taliban in 2010 and 2011.

    By the summer of 2011, Captain Quinn and Sergeant Martland, both Green Berets on their second tour in northern Kunduz Province, began to receive dire complaints about the Afghan Local Police units they were training and supporting.

    First, they were told, one of the militia commanders raped a 14- or 15-year-old girl whom he had spotted working in the fields. Captain Quinn informed the provincial police chief, who soon levied punishment. “He got one day in jail, and then she was forced to marry him,” Mr. Quinn said.

    When he asked a superior officer what more he could do, he was told that he had done well to bring it up with local officials but that there was nothing else to be done. “We’re being praised for doing the right thing, and a guy just got away with raping a 14-year-old girl,” Mr. Quinn said.
    Photo
    A portrait of Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr. in his family's home in Oceanside, N.Y. He was shot to death in 2012 by a teenage "tea boy" living on his base in Helmand Province. Credit Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

    Village elders grew more upset at the predatory behavior of American-backed commanders. After each case, Captain Quinn would gather the Afghan commanders and lecture them on human rights.

    Soon another commander absconded with his men’s wages. Mr. Quinn said he later heard that the commander had spent the money on dancing boys. Another commander murdered his 12-year-old daughter in a so-called honor killing for having kissed a boy. “There were no repercussions,” Mr. Quinn recalled.

    In September 2011, an Afghan woman, visibly bruised, showed up at an American base with her son, who was limping. One of the Afghan police commanders in the area, Abdul Rahman, had abducted the boy and forced him to become a sex slave, chained to his bed, the woman explained. When she sought her son’s return, she herself was beaten. Her son had eventually been released, but she was afraid it would happen again, she told the Americans on the base.

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    She explained that because “her son was such a good-looking kid, he was a status symbol” coveted by local commanders, recalled Mr. Quinn, who did not speak to the woman directly but was told about her visit when he returned to the base from a mission later that day.

    So Captain Quinn summoned Abdul Rahman and confronted him about what he had done. The police commander acknowledged that it was true, but brushed it off. When the American officer began to lecture about “how you are held to a higher standard if you are working with U.S. forces, and people expect more of you,” the commander began to laugh.
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    Recent Comments
    Query 3 minutes ago

    evil. Not news. Why this evil, this front page, now? Someone is pulling strings. Why?
    Allen Roth 19 minutes ago

    This is a lesson about the wisdom (or lack of it) of engaging in realpolitik by associating and supporting regimes and countries that are...
    Bill Ollar 22 minutes ago

    Mr. President please remove all American forces from Afghanistan TODAY! It is absolutely tragic that we had a hand in this.

    See All Comments Write a comment

    “I picked him up and threw him onto the ground,” Mr. Quinn said. Sergeant Martland joined in, he said. “I did this to make sure the message was understood that if he went back to the boy, that it was not going to be tolerated,” Mr. Quinn recalled.

    There is disagreement over the extent of the commander’s injuries. Mr. Quinn said they were not serious, which was corroborated by an Afghan official who saw the commander afterward.

    (The commander, Abdul Rahman, was killed two years ago in a Taliban ambush. His brother said in an interview that his brother had never raped the boy, but was the victim of a false accusation engineered by his enemies.)

    Sergeant Martland, who received a Bronze Star for valor for his actions during a Taliban ambush, wrote in a letter to the Army this year that he and Mr. Quinn “felt that morally we could no longer stand by and allow our A.L.P. to commit atrocities,” referring to the Afghan Local Police.

    The father of Lance Corporal Buckley believes the policy of looking away from sexual abuse was a factor in his son’s death, and he has filed a lawsuit to press the Marine Corps for more information about it.

    Lance Corporal Buckley and two other Marines were killed in 2012 by one of a large entourage of boys living at their base with an Afghan police commander named Sarwar Jan.

    Mr. Jan had long had a bad reputation; in 2010, two Marine officers managed to persuade the Afghan authorities to arrest him following a litany of abuses, including corruption, support for the Taliban and child abduction. But just two years later, the police commander was back with a different unit, working at Lance Corporal Buckley’s post, Forward Operating Base Delhi, in Helmand Province.

    Lance Corporal Buckley had noticed that a large entourage of “tea boys” — domestic servants who are sometimes pressed into sexual slavery — had arrived with Mr. Jan and moved into the same barracks, one floor below the Marines. He told his father about it during his final call home.

    Word of Mr. Jan’s new position also reached the Marine officers who had gotten him arrested in 2010. One of them, Maj. Jason Brezler, dashed out an email to Marine officers at F.O.B. Delhi, warning them about Mr. Jan and attaching a dossier about him.

    The warning was never heeded. About two weeks later, one of the older boys with Mr. Jan — around 17 years old — grabbed a rifle and killed Lance Corporal Buckley and the other Marines.

    Lance Corporal Buckley’s father still agonizes about whether the killing occurred because of the sexual abuse by an American ally. “As far as the young boys are concerned, the Marines are allowing it to happen and so they’re guilty by association,” Mr. Buckley said. “They don’t know our Marines are sick to their stomachs.”

    The one American service member who was punished in the investigation that followed was Major Brezler, who had sent the email warning about Mr. Jan, his lawyers said. In one of Major Brezler’s hearings, Marine Corps lawyers warned that information about the police commander’s penchant for abusing boys might be classified. The Marine Corps has initiated proceedings to discharge Major Brezler.

    Mr. Jan appears to have moved on, to a higher-ranking police command in the same province. In an interview, he denied keeping boys as sex slaves or having any relationship with the boy who killed the three Marines. “No, it’s all untrue,” Mr. Jan said. But people who know him say he still suffers from “a toothache problem,” a euphemism here for child sexual abuse.
    Non-violence is the creed of those that maintain a monopoly on force.



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  3. #2
    History will not judge us kindly.
    While we enjoy our digital downloads and dinners out, our taxes fund sexual child abuse on the other side of the world.
    Are we the Germans Christians of 1942...singing loudly in church so as to drown out the cries from the cattle cars?
    Citizens of Weimar claimed ignorance of what happened in the Buchenwald concentration camps. We will not have that luxury.
    Now what?
    Non-violence is the creed of those that maintain a monopoly on force.

  4. #3
    Hey brother, the troops are fighting to spread freedom!

  5. #4
    The Muslim lifestyle.....sick
    "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it."
    James Madison

    "It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." - Samuel Adams



    Μολὼν λάβε
    Dum Spiro, Pugno
    Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito

  6. #5
    Should We Fight Pashtun Pedophiles?
    http://www.theamericanconservative.c...l-imperialism/

    Read the whole thing. It’s horrifying — and it poses very difficult questions to us all. I mean, the outrage is easy — I certainly feel it — but the questions are hard.

    I wonder how many Americans realize that one of the reasons the Taliban was welcomed by Afghan peasants is that it fought bacha bazi. The Washington Post reported in 2012:
    [...]
    If I were an Afghan peasant and the only way to stop Pashtun perverts from doing that to my son was to empower the Taliban, I would welcome the Taliban. Wouldn’t you?

    In the NYT story, we learn that two US soldiers were punished by the military for beating up an Afghan commander they found with a boy sex slave chained to his bed. The idea here is that the US needs to work with these degenerates to fight the Taliban (who are also degenerate, but in a different way).

    Think through the outrage, and understand how difficult this problem is for US strategists. I would sooner be court-martialed than sit there and listen while a man rapes a child, and do nothing about it because I have to follow orders. If men under my command had shot that SOB, I would have given them a commendation. That said, if the mission of our forces is to defeat the Taliban, then we have to work with those who fight them. If the Taliban in power is a national security threat to the United States, then it is arguably in our national interest to tolerate the evil that is not a danger to our country for the sake of defeating the evil that is.

    I’m not saying that I agree with that argument. I’m saying that the correct course of action for the US here is not clear-cut.
    I find the claim that the Taliban a threat to national security dubious. And since it was the Taliban who protected the children from becoming sex slaves, how is this winning hearts and minds of anyone but the US Empire's pedophile allies?

    Also here:

    http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...ys-on-US-Bases

    http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...inging-This-Up
    Last edited by Lucille; 09-24-2015 at 08:07 AM.
    Based on the idea of natural rights, government secures those rights to the individual by strictly negative intervention, making justice costless and easy of access; and beyond that it does not go. The State, on the other hand, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing.
    --Albert J. Nock

  7. #6
    just cops doing their job. No different than what we have here...

  8. #7
    Neo-Trot Central is playing dumb.

    And our own military admits that this wasn’t just a case of a few bad apples, but formal policy for troops serving in Afghanistan. I find myself nearly at a loss for words here. Weren’t we supposed to be the good guys?
    [...]
    There’s a few things we need to know here. How long as this been our “official policy” vis a vis chaining young boys to beds and sodomizing them on a US military base? Who instituted this policy and how far up the chain did it go? And please do note that this isn’t some sort of partisan, Left vs Right, Democrat vs Republican question here. We’ve been in Afghanistan for a long time and the policy may well date back to the Bush administration. (Though even if it does, the weight still falls on the current administration for not stopping it.) Or did it come strictly from inside the military without anyone “bothering” the civilian leadership over it?
    I reminded them that Manning exposed this official policy long ago but that Americans reserved their outrage for the whistleblower.

    hxxp://hotair.com/archives/2015/09/21/us-soldiers-disciplined-for-stopping-rape-of-children-by-afghan-police/
    Based on the idea of natural rights, government secures those rights to the individual by strictly negative intervention, making justice costless and easy of access; and beyond that it does not go. The State, on the other hand, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing.
    --Albert J. Nock

  9. #8
    The American policy of nonintervention is intended to maintain good relations with the Afghan police and militia units the United States has trained to fight the Taliban.
    : |
    Quote Originally Posted by Ron Paul
    Perhaps the most important lesson from Obamacare is that while liberty is lost incrementally, it cannot be regained incrementally. The federal leviathan continues its steady growth; sometimes boldly and sometimes quietly. Obamacare is just the latest example, but make no mistake: the statists are winning. So advocates of liberty must reject incremental approaches and fight boldly for bedrock principles.
    The epitome of libertarian populism



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  11. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by puppetmaster View Post
    The Muslim lifestyle.....sick
    That Taliban were more Muslim than the people we are now protecting and funding.
    The proper concern of society is the preservation of individual freedom; the proper concern of the individual is the harmony of society.

    "Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow." - Byron

    "Who overcomes by force, hath overcome but half his foe." - Milton

  12. #10
    Be all you can be, help an afghan rape a boy in the ARMY.

  13. #11
    All this cr@p is making me feel sick...

  14. #12
    “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.”
    Between this and helping guard the opium/heroin trade, now you know why they killed Pat Tillman as well.

    He had the podium to shout about this.

    Would love to know what the Warvengelicals say about this.
    Last edited by Anti Federalist; 09-22-2015 at 08:44 PM.

  15. #13
    Don't like it? Don't be Joe Employee....


  16. #14
    The open borders, "there is no difference in culture" useful idiots to the globalists, should take note.

    "“My son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it’s their culture.”
    ================
    Open Borders: A Libertarian Reappraisal or why only dumbasses and cultural marxists are for it.

    Cultural Marxism: The Corruption of America

    The Property Basis of Rights

  17. #15
    I'm very open to the idea of allowing anyone of any country or religion coming into my country (Canada) to restart their life so long as they understand they are leaving a bad situation for an infinitely better one - a lot of which has to do with culture. Race, gender, religion are irrelevant in the context of understanding that you are your own man/woman and must work for your bread and to not harm anyone for any reason other than immediate self defense.

    Sadly some of the most economically successful and tolerant countries in the world are predominantly "white" and are now AFRAID to be called racist, hater or bigots for the simple desiring that ANYONE (regardless of any race, color or creed) entering their country desire the same intention of adhering to the CULTURE that was established by the original population.

    So with that, I agree with you.

    Open borders is immensely destabilizing and has no place anywhere in the world.

    Quote Originally Posted by LibertyEagle View Post
    The open borders, "there is no difference in culture" useful idiots to the globalists, should take note.

    "“My son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it’s their culture.”
    "Like an army falling, one by one by one" - Linkin Park

  18. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Seraphim View Post
    Open borders is immensely destabilizing and has no place anywhere in the world.
    It's akin to cutting all the watertight bulkheads out of a ship.

    One leak, anywhere, and you're sunk.



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  20. #17
    I'd have walked next door, put a bullet in each of the perpetrators brain pan and told my C.O. I can't wait till my court martial makes the American press.

  21. #18
    & a Bush is still allowed to run for President.

  22. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Anti Federalist View Post
    Between this and helping guard the opium/heroin trade, now you know why they killed Pat Tillman as well.

    He had the podium to shout about this.

    Would love to know what the Warvengelicals say about this.
    Not nearly as much outrage as there was when, say, people protested when Sarah Palin's kid stood on a dog. The idea that Sarah failed as a dog owner or a parent in that instance was akin to blasphemy in some circles.

    http://www.google.com/search?redir_e...eerepublic.com

  23. #20
    In New Zealand:
    The Coastguard is a Charity
    Air Traffic Control is a private company run on user fees
    The DMV is a private non-profit
    Rescue helicopters and ambulances are operated by charities and are plastered with corporate logos
    The agriculture industry has zero subsidies
    5% of the national vote, gets you 5 seats in Parliament
    A tax return has 4 fields
    Business licenses aren't a thing
    Prostitution is legal
    We have a constitutional right to refuse any type of medical care

  24. #21
    What is the controversy?

    In the Middle East women are for procreation and boys are for pleasure...so are goats...so are camels...

    That is simply how Muslims are.
    "I know the urge to arm yourself, because that’s what I did. I was trained in firearms. When I walked to the hospital when my husband was sick, I carried a concealed weapon. I made the determination that if somebody was going to try to take me out I was going to take them with me."

    Diane Feinstein, 1995

  25. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by Uriel999 View Post
    What is the controversy?

    In the Middle East women are for procreation and boys are for pleasure...so are goats...so are camels...

    That is simply how Muslims are.
    And the us military simply allowing to occur on base is simply how they are.

  26. #23
    If you thought this world was evil, you really never knew....

  27. #24
    well, we have our grievances about them, and they have theirs about us....



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  29. #25
    This is definitely an angle Rand could use to show WHY we should get out of the middle east. If the supposed good guys that we are fighting to install in power are this bad what the hell are we doing there!.
    War; everything in the world wrong, evil and immoral combined into one and multiplied by millions.

  30. #26
    Quote Originally Posted by klamath View Post
    This is definitely an angle Rand could use to show WHY we should get out of the middle east. If the supposed good guys that we are fighting to install in power are this bad what the hell are we doing there!.
    the MIC...

  31. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by klamath View Post
    This is definitely an angle Rand could use to show WHY we should get out of the middle east. If the supposed good guys that we are fighting to install in power are this bad what the hell are we doing there!.
    Corporate welfare for Big Pharma. They got to have their poppies.

    If we don't use billions of taxpayer dollars holding the poppy fields for Big Pharma, then when they charge us a hundred dollars a dose for morphine they might make less than ninety dollars pure profit on it!
    Quote Originally Posted by fisharmor View Post
    Yeah, well, you've already collected as many flies with vinegar as you're gonna.

  32. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by Slave Mentality View Post
    And the us military simply allowing to occur on base is simply how they are.
    Child molestation is a cultural norm over there.

    You can't stop it.

    These are people living in the dark ages where they would rather $#@! a goat or camel than a female.

    What where we to do? We couldn't even stop the locals from raping camels let alone children.

    Feral humans exist. They cannot be tamed. They will not assimilate into the ideals of western society.
    "I know the urge to arm yourself, because that’s what I did. I was trained in firearms. When I walked to the hospital when my husband was sick, I carried a concealed weapon. I made the determination that if somebody was going to try to take me out I was going to take them with me."

    Diane Feinstein, 1995

  33. #29
    Quote Originally Posted by vita3 View Post
    & a Bush is still allowed to run for President.
    What were you expecting in a rigged election? when the media decides candidates for you.

  34. #30

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