With big decisions looming about the future of the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan, lawmakers on Tuesday grilled the top U.S. commander there about allegations that Afghan military leaders routinely sexually assault young boys while U.S. troops are told to turn a blind eye to the crimes.
“This committee treats such allegations with the utmost seriousness,” Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee told Army Gen. John Campbell.
“It is precisely because we’re fighting for progress and fighting for our values that it’s been so disturbing to read reports alleging that some of our coalition partners may be engaged in sexual abuse and other activities that contradict our values,” the Arizona Republican said Tuesday.
The issue of Afghan sexual abuse of young boys, particularly by Afghan military and police leaders, is drawing increased attention. A number of American troops who deployed to Afghanistan have said they saw signs of widespread sexual abuse and believed there was a policy, even if unofficial, encouraging them to ignore the crime rather than create tension between Americans and Afghans.
Campbell testified that he has spoken about the concerns of U.S. officials regarding the issue to Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, who has “stated emphatically … that he will prosecute anyone suspected of committing sexual assault upon children.”
Campbell also said a new policy requires all U.S. troops deploying to Afghanistan to undergo “additional training on human rights abuse reporting requirements.”
“The training very clearly indicates that sexual abuse by Afghan security forces is a human rights abuse issue,” he said.
He also noted that the Afghan military has begun training its own judge advocates “to be able to perform what we call mobile training teams, to go out to the different corps to re-emphasize human rights training throughout.”
Campbell said he was unaware of any troops lodging reports of sexual abuse by Afghan security personnel during his tenure that began last year. “And I think that is a result of the Afghans’ understanding that they have to get after this,” he said.
Several troops have said they were punished or disciplined for intervening or taking action against Afghans whom they believed were sexually assaulting children, in some cases on joint military installations. Several specific examples were reported Sept. 19 by The New York Times.
Campbell said those allegations, which are being handled internally by the Army and Marine Corps, predate his command. “I didn’t have anything to do with those cases,” he said in response to a question. “The cases that you refer to are four, five, six years ago. I can’t speak to those.”
He said he does not believe that service members have ignored evidence of child sexual assault. “This is … a fundamental value of our military, to treat people with dignity and respect.”
While top Afghan officials have vowed to crack down on Afghan military leaders who sexually assault young boys, they claim the practice known as “bacha bazi” — literally, “boy play” — is not widespread.
“There are certain commanders who may be involved in these activities, but that doesn’t mean there’s a cultural acceptance of these activities, absolutely not,” Hekmat Khalil Karzai, Afghanistan’s deputy foreign minister and a cousin of the troubled nation’s former president, told Military Times in a recent interview.
“There will be absolutely no tolerance for this kind of behavior,” Karzai said.
Rape and sexual exploitation are endemic in Afghanistan, and such crimes are rarely prosecuted, according to human rights groups. The practice often is ritualized in parties where young boys are dressed as girls and publicly treated as sex slaves.
