Were U.S. troops ordered to ignore sexual abuse in Afghanistan?

The Pentagon’s inspector general plans to investigate a deluge of recent reports accusing U.S. military commanders of mishandling child sexual assault cases in Afghanistan dating back to 2011.

Last week’s announcement comes just weeks after The New York Times published an article detailing U.S. service members’ encounters with Afghan troops sexually assaulting young boys. When U.S. soldiers and Marines tried to report the abuse, their commanders ordered them not to intervene, according to interviews and court records.

The Times interviewed two men—Dan Quinn, a former Special Forces captain, and Gregory Buckley Sr., whose son died in Afghanistan in 2012. Buckley said his son, a Marine lance corporal, told him he could hear Afghan police 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,” Buckley recalled his son telling him. His commanding officer ordered him to ignore it because “it’s their culture.”

The “culture” in question is called “bacha bazi,” translated “boy play.” The practice is prevalent in Afghanistan, particularly among armed commanders who retain power in the region. Under Taliban rule, the practice was punishable by death and all but disappeared. But with the Taliban out of power, there has been a marked increase in sexual exploitation of young boys.

U.S. service members speaking out about the situation say the military’s unofficial policy of nonintervention in cases of suspected child abuse was an attempt to maintain good relations with Afghan allies recruited to help hold the territory against the Taliban.

But many U.S. service members found the policy hard to stomach.

“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,” Quinn told The Times. Along with Sgt. First Class Charles Martland, a Special Forces member, Quinn confronted an American-backed militia commander for keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave.

“I picked him up and threw him onto the ground,” Quinn told The Times.

A spokesman for the American command in Afghanistan, Col. Brian Tribus, suggested U.S. officials should not get involved in sex abuse cases.

“Allegations of child sexual abuse by Afghan military or police personnel would be a matter of domestic Afghan criminal law,” he wrote in an email. “There would be no expressed requirement that U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan report it.”

But Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook denied such a policy exists.

“There is no policy in place that directs any U.S. military or government personnel overseas to ignore human rights abuses,” he told reporters.

When public outcry against the policy reached the Pentagon, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan joined the chorus of high-ranking officials denying its existence.

“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,” wrote Army Gen. John Campbell in a statement released last month.

While there may have been no explicit policy on ignoring complaints, that’s exactly what happened, according to veterans. And soldiers and Marines who disobeyed the unwritten directive were punished. After Quinn’s altercation with the militia commander, the Army relieved him of command and sent him home. He has since left the military. The Army discharged Martland, but he has appealed his case.

“Kicking me out of the Army is morally wrong, and the entire country knows it,” Martland said in a statement. “While I understand that a military lawyer can say that I was legally wrong, we felt a moral obligation to act.”