'boy play' & nixing the Muslim faith

[JEEP]

From this morning's Columbus Dispatch - pg A3. The front page was dominated by 'Pay to Play' story re extracurricula fees to participate in school sports. That of course was a much more important story than the following > another example of the sordid truth finally coming to light (assuming it's not satire!):

U.S. troops in Afghanistan instructed to ignore ‘boy play’

By Joseph Goldstein The New York Times • Monday September 21, 2015 6:28 AM

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. “My son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it’s their culture.”

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 U.S. 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.

The policy has endured as U.S. forces have recruited and organized Afghan militias to help hold territory against the Taliban. But soldiers and Marines have been troubled that instead of weeding out pedophiles, the U.S. military was placing them as 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 a U.S.-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 such as Quinn have faced discipline, even career ruin, for disobeying it.

After the beating, the Army relieved Quinn of his command and pulled him from Afghanistan. He has since left the military. The Army is also trying to forcibly retire Sgt. 1st Class Charles Martland, who joined Quinn in beating up the commander.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/national_world/2015/09/20/u-s--troops-instructed-to-ignore-boy-play.html


Perhaps all the good Christians in America will find no fault w/ this since the Afghans are Muslims after all. From Pg A4:

Candidate Carson: Muslim shouldn’t be president

WASHINGTON — Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said on Sunday that Muslims are unfit to be president of the United States, arguing their faith is inconsistent with American principles.

“I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that,” Carson told NBC’s Meet the Press.

The remarks by Carson, who is near the top of opinion polls among Republican candidates, followed a controversy stemming from front-runner Donald Trump declining to challenge anti-Muslim comments made by a supporter on Friday.

Carson, a Christian, said he thought a U.S. president’s faith should be “consistent with the Constitution.” Asked whether he thought Islam met this bar, he said: “No, I do not.”

America’s largest Muslim civil-rights group condemned Carson for his statement, which it said should disqualify him from the presidential contest because the U.S. Constitution forbids religious tests for holding public office.

Minnesota Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison, the first practicing Muslim elected to Congress, said: “ It’s unimaginable that the leading GOP presidential candidates are resorting to fear mongering to benefit their campaigns.”

Trump, asked on Meet the Press on Sunday whether he would accept a Muslim president, replied: “Some people have said it already happened.”

Carson had been rising in polls, although he gave up some ground in a CNN/ORC poll released on Sunday, slipping to third place from second with 14 percent support. Sixteen Republicans are seeking the party’s nomination for the presidential election in November 2016.

The CNN/ORC poll showed Trump, a real-estate mogul, continued to lead the contest with the support of 24 percent of registered voters, down from 32 percent in a previous poll. Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina surged into second place with 15 percent support, just above Carson. Ohio Gov. John Kasich is 10th with 2 percent.

Of Republicans who watched Wednesday’s GOP presidential debate, 52 percent identified Fiorina as the winner and 31 percent said Trump was the loser.

On Sunday, Fiorina portrayed herself in an interview on Fox News Sunday as a tough negotiator and hard-nosed manager willing to trim government inefficiency and bureaucracy.

Fiorina defended her record at Hewlett-Packard, doubled down on cutting federal funding to Planned Parenthood, and said she could bring Democrats to the table on entitlements, tax cuts and border security.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/national_world/2015/09/20/carson-muslim-shouldnt-be-president.html


Five of the most prominent Founding Fathers were Deists - so I guess they wouldn't have a chance of being elected today. The anti-Muslim push by so-called Christians, the orchestration of a black vs white race war w/ Police State overtones, and the on-going immigrant issue both here & abroad - all pre-eminent Divide & Conquer strategies totally running amok.

From Wiki:
Running amok, sometimes referred to as simply amok,[1] also spelled amuk, from the Malay language,[2] is "an episode of sudden mass assault against people or objects usually by a single individual following a period of brooding that has traditionally been regarded as occurring especially in Malay culture but is now increasingly viewed as psychopathological behavior occurring worldwide in numerous countries and cultures"

 

[JEEP]

The first story has hit Veterans Today w/ pictures!

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/09/21/we-heard-them-screaming-us-troops-told-to-ignore-afghan-soldiers-abusing-boys/

 

[JEEP]

It's on Whatreallyhappended.com too - the linked story is to the NY Times and has these picture captions:

Gregory Buckley Sr. believes the policy of looking the other way was a factor in his son's killing.

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. (Two other Marines were also killed)

This Times article is a longer version than what appeared in the Dispatch. Some additional excerpts:

"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."

And, it's not just boys - girls are being victimized too:

"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.
[...]
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.
[...]
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."

It should be noted that this story has generated 1631 comments.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/world/asia/us-soldiers-told-to-ignore-afghan-allies-abuse-of-boys.html?_r=3

 

[JEEP]

And the official response re the abusing of boys in Afghanistan:

Ashraf Ghani, Afghan President, Vows to Crack Down on Abuse of Boys

Addressing revulsion at the widespread sexual abuse of boys by powerful Afghan commanders, President Ashraf Ghani pledged on Wednesday that his government would do what it could to stamp out a practice that is pervasive among many wealthy and prominent men in his country.

Mr. Ghani was unambiguous in his condemnation of the practice, calling it “unacceptable” and saying that pedophiles would be prosecuted no matter who they were.

“Six-year-, 8-year-, 10-year-olds are raped, and I’m not going to tolerate this,” Mr. Ghani said from Kabul in an interview conducted by video conference. “To the extent to which the authority of the state can be harnessed to this task, we are going to focus on it and not permit it.”

That will be no easy feat. Though many Afghans find it repugnant, the sexual abuse of boys is so widespread that the practice even has a euphemistic name — bacha bazi, literally “boy play” — and is often ritualized in parties at which young boys are dressed as girls and forced to dance before they are raped.

The phenomenon has been well documented by human rights groups, journalists and others for years. But even more problematic for Mr. Ghani is that many of the perpetrators are commanders in the Afghan security forces, militia leaders or other powerful men who back the government. The Taliban, in contrast, banned the practice when they were in power.

Throughout the war in Afghanistan, American-led forces struggled with how to handle the issue when the sexual abuse became apparent. Service members encountered it at police posts, at Afghan Army bases and, at times, even on shared bases. Even high-level American officials sometimes found themselves dealing with powerful Afghans who were widely accused of pederasty, such as Gul Agha Shirzai, a former provincial governor and an important power broker in Afghanistan who once enjoyed close ties with the United States.

The problem was so common that an American military report in 2011 listed the rape of boys as an issue that could cause tension between American and Afghan troops.

Most often, the immediate solution was to ignore allegations of child rape, according to soldiers and Marines who served in Afghanistan. The troops said they understood that the unofficial policy was to look the other way or, if necessary, to report any evidence they had to their superiors, who could then pass it to the Afghan authorities. Still, some soldiers said that rarely happened.

But not all troops on the front line — who, at the height of the war, often shared bases with Afghan forces — ignored abuse. An article published Sunday by The New York Times details how, in 2011, two American soldiers beat up an Afghan commander who had been accused of raping boys and had laughed when confronted with the allegations. One of the soldiers was relieved of his command and then left the military, and the other is being forced out.

In the days since, the Pentagon and Gen. John F. Campbell, the commander of the American-led coalition, have said there is no formal policy of disregarding allegations of rape, pedophilia or any other kind of abuse.

“I want to make absolutely clear that any sexual abuse or similar mistreatment of others, no matter the alleged perpetrator or victim, is completely unacceptable and reprehensible,” General Campbell said in a statement. He also said he had ordered troops to send such accusations up the chain of command.

Mr. Ghani said in the interview that he and General Campbell spoke about the issue on Monday, and that the Afghan government was forming a committee to investigate all allegations of child rape.

“We will take action, ranging from removing people from the security forces to introducing them to the courts,” Mr. Ghani said.

Still, the Afghan justice system’s ability to take on wrongdoing stands in question, with many courts riddled with corruption or ineffective because the people they are targeting are powerful and well connected.

Mr. Ghani acknowledged that “the larger cultural dynamic needs time.”

He cast the child sexual abuse problem as one rooted far deeper than present-day Afghanistan. “Our Greek and Turkish heritage have generated periods of long practices,” he said. “Those require a large cultural-social dialogue that require purpose and energy.”

Alexander the Great conquered much of Afghanistan starting around 330 B.C., bringing with him ancient Greek cultural practices that died out in their homeland millenniums ago. And though the sexual abuse of boys was a feature of life in the Ottoman Empire, it faded in the 19th century and is no longer accepted in Turkey.

In Afghanistan, though, the rape of boys persists, and Mr. Ghani insisted, “I’m not going to tolerate this.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/24/world/asia/ashraf-ghani-afghan-president-vows-to-crack-down-on-abuse-of-boys.html

From a link in the article:
Afghanistan sees rise in ‘dancing boys’ exploitation

A growing number of Afghan children are being coerced into a life of sexual abuse. The practice of wealthy or prominent Afghans exploiting underage boys as sexual partners who are often dressed up as women to dance at gatherings is on the rise in post-Taliban Afghanistan, according to Afghan human rights researchers, Western officials and men who participate in the abuse.

“Like it or not, there was better rule of law under the Taliban,” said Dee Brillenburg Wurth, a child-protection expert at the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, who has sought to persuade the government to address the problem. “They saw it as a sin, and they stopped a lot of it.” [Note: Same for growing poppies for heroin - the Taliban all but wiped it out until US troops arrived to get production rolling again.]

If you think your stomach can take it, read more at:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/afganistans-dancing-boys-are-invisible-victims/2012/04/04/gIQAyreSwS_story.html

There's this documentary too - not sure if it's viewable by everyone:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/dancingboys/

This piece generated lots of comments as did the original NY Times article (I saw a balloon caption noting well over 1800 comments on the original webpage):

Readers React to Afghan Allies’ Sexual Abuse of Boys

In more than 1,000 comments posted on the article, “U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Sexual Abuse of Boys by Afghan Allies,” readers’ outrage was directed at the perpetrators — in some cases, critical allies who kept boys chained to beds — and at the American officers who instructed subordinates to ignore what they saw.
[...]
Other readers celebrated the American soldiers and Marines who lost jobs and, in one case, died after they became aware of sexual abuse and tried to stop it. Dan Quinn, a former Special Forces captain, was relieved of his command after beating up a United States-backed militia leader who kept a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave. Four years later, the Army is trying to force Sgt. First Class Charles Martland, who helped Captain Quinn beat up the militia leader, to retire.

Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr. was killed in 2012 by one of the “tea boys” who stayed on base with an Afghan police commander named Sarwar Jan. Other Americans had previously accused the commander of abuse, but he lived with his retinue of boys in the same barracks as Marines.
[...]
Others assailed the military for taking disciplinary action against Captain Quinn and Sergeant Martland.
[...]
For some readers, the article reflected their own views of the Afghan war. They saw it as an indictment of American failures or Afghan ingratitude.

Full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/22/world/asia/readers-react-to-afghan-allies-sexual-abuse-of-boys.html?action=click&contentCollection=Asia%20Pacific&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article

That so many felt compelled to comment certainly gives hope that the populace IS beginning to wake up - at least to some extent.