Source: (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images) / Getty
Two U.S. soldiers used physical force to make their message clear to the Afghan police commander who had been sexually abusing a boy. Dan Quinn, who was a U.S. Army captain at the time, told CNN “I picked him up, threw him to the ground multiple times and Charles did the same thing. 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’s actions as well as the actions of the other soldier, Sgt. 1st Class Charles Martland, against the American-backed police commander displeased their superiors in the U.S. military. Quinn says shortly afterward he and Martland were relieved of their duties.
Since then Quinn has left the military and Martland is now being involuntary separated from the Army. Both had directly confronted an ongoing issue for U.S. forces in Afghanistan: the subculture of bacha bazi, or “boy play,” in which young Afghans are used as sex slaves by grown men.
The abuse of children is infuriatingly hard to stop for U.S. service members in Afghanistan, especially when it’s carried out by Afghan commanders allied with American-led forces.
Quinn said “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. We were trying to build up the local government. Us acting after the local government fails to can certainly undermine their credibility.”
According to The New York Times U.S. soldiers and Marines in Afghanistan have been ordered not to intervene in the abuse of Afghan boys by U.S. allies, even in some cases in which it’s taken place on military bases. The Pentagon denies that telling soldiers to look the other way is official practice.
Spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said “We have never had a policy in place that directs any military member, or any government personnel overseas to ignore human rights abuses. Any sexual abuse, no matter who the alleged perpetrator and no matter who the victim, is completely unacceptable and reprehensible.”
CNN reports that terrorism expert Jessica Stern said she has spoken to several U.S. service members who say they were disturbed by what they saw in Afghanistan. Stern said they believed that “the fear is that if we were to intervene, we wouldn’t have the kind of close working relationship that we need” with Afghan security forces.
The Afghan Interior Ministry claims it received reports of sexual abuse of children by police officials in 2011 and 2012 and has since taken steps to address the problem. A spokesman for the ministry, told CNN “We have started taking the issue very seriously and have brought fundamental changes.”
U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican from California, has taken up Martland’s case with Defense Secretary Ash Carter to save the soldier’s career. However after a decade of training with U.S. forces, it seems some Afghan commanders are continuing the abuse unchecked.
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