(US Special Forces officer Dan Quinn, who was relieved of his command for arguing with an Afghan commander who practiced Bacha Bazi, Picture from NY Times )
Earlier this week, the New York Times published an article titled “Afghan Pedophiles Get Free Pass From U.S. Military, Report Says”. In it, the articles talks about a heavily redacted report from the Special Inspector General for Afghan reconstruction, which reveals that on 5,753 separate occasions the US military requested a review of Afghan security forces for potential human rights violations.
These potential human rights violations refer primarily to the practice of bacha bazi, translated as “boy play”. Under this practice, commanders and soldiers in the Afghan security forces take young boys, to use as sex slaves. Reports of this as a widespread practice have appeared previously in the New York Times, dating back to 2015.
Furthermore, according to the Times, US soldiers have been repeatedly instructed to look the other way in regards to the practice, and some have even been disciplined for speaking out or trying to interfere with and stop the practice. The Leahy Law necessitates that the US cut off aid to any foreign military committing human rights violations. This creates an obvious problem for the US, as its goal is to have Afghan security forces to get to the point where they can fight the Taliban on their own without US support. Afghan security forces are unlikely to reach this point without US funding however.
(Image from This is What Winning Looks Like)
This was the first time I had ever heard about this practice, and about this problem in general, so imagine how surprised I was to look in the comments and read about a documentary that covered this exact issue all the way back in 2013. The documentary in question, This Is What Winning Looks Like was produced by VICE and covered a lot of the issues around the US preparing to pull out of Afghanistan, and raised the uncomfortable question, of what was the point, if the people we leave in power are as bad as the Taliban.
The fact that this documentary was covering this story in detail 5 years ago, speaks to the quality of the reporting done in it, and it is possible that without this documentary and the earlier Times pieces, the investigations would not have been launched at all. This is a good example of the impact that a well-made documentary can have on the world.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ppa4a8/this-is-what-winning-looks-like-part-1
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/world/asia/afghanistan-military-abuse.html
