"I picked him up, threw him to the ground multiple times," former U.S. Army captain Dan Quinn said. He was talking about how he intervened when an Afghan police officer was allegedly abusing a young boy. Quinn was relieved of his military duties shortly after this incident, according to CNN.
Quinn, along with Sgt. First Class Charles Martland, admittedly assaulted an Afghan police commander. "We basically had to make sure that he fully understood that if he ever went near that boy or his mother again, there was going to be hell to pay," Quinn said of the event.
Bacha bazi, "boy play," is a part of Afghan culture. This is the practice of older, adult men who surround themselves with young boys that they use in a sexual manner. Some of the Afghanis who are working with U.S. soldiers engage in this culture of sex play, which by American standards is considered to be pedophilia and a great crime.
This puts U.S. soldiers in a tricky position. "The reason we weren't able to step in with these local rape cases was we didn't want to undermine the authority of the local government," Quinn said. Allegedly, U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan have been told not to interfere or intervene when they see sexual child abuse of this nature while in Afghanistan.
The Pentagon denies these allegations, CNN reported. "We have never had a policy in place that directs any military member, or any government personnel overseas to ignore human rights abuses," Pentagon spokesperson Capt. Jeff Davis said.
Any crimes of sexual abuse committed by Afghan police or military officials is a matter of Afghan law, according to Radio Free Europe. "It's fundamentally an Afghan law enforcement matter," Davis said.
As for the supposed policy of U.S. military personnel looking the other way, the U.S. denies it. "I personally have served multiple tours of duty in Afghanistan and am absolutely confident that no such theater policy has ever existed here, and certainly, no such policy has existed throughout my tenure as commander," Army Gen. John Campbell said in a statement, according to Military Times.
