In his last phone call home, Lance Corporal 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.”
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 United States soldiers and Marines have been instructed not to intervene – not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases, according to interviews and court records.
The policy has endured as US forces have recruited and organised Afghan militia to help hold territory against the Taliban.
But soldiers and Marines have been increasingly troubled that instead of weeding out paedophiles, the US military was arming them in some cases and placing them as the commanders of villages, and doing little when they began abusing children.
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