Bacha Bazi a.k.a. "Boy Play"

You think you know a person, especially if their your allies in an ongoing war on terrorism. According to this article, the Afghan police force practices what is known as "bacha bazi" or translated in English as "boy play". The Afghan police officers or even army commanders take boys back to their base and sexually abuse them. Even though we Americans may find this barbaric and very risqué, it's only a normal practice in Afghanistan. Quite a different practice that their police or army demonstrate compared to ours. Even though many our soldiers would like to interfere and try to do something about it, they can't. In fact, our soldiers have been ordered not to intervene at all! Our soldiers are there to fight against terrorist groups like the Taliban and not some ribald issue.


In America, any type of child abuse is a huge issue. Of course as Americans when we hear a story like this we are appalled by this type of behavior the Afghan forces exercise. We are all probably wondering why we haven't tried to at least try to step in and stop such conduct. Even for me, I wonder how a soldier of the U.S. just doesn't do anything about it. Sure, they are following orders which is very important and shows great grit, but with an issue that has become more widespread in our motherland, how come we are just letting innocent children get abused? We are told not to intervene because that would mean we would come between the Afghanistan way of doing things. We would be disrupting something that the Afghan culture believe is the right thing to do. Our soldiers fight everyday to preserve our freedom and keep our way of life intact. If soldiers are trying to keep our way of life and everything we believe is right, why would they do that to our allies? It would be hypocritical of us otherwise. Don't get me wrong, I believe what the Afghan forces are doing to those kids is absolutely wrong in so many ways and do not agree with it. However, as an American citizen, I understand that it's acceptable in their culture and there's nothing I can really do about it.