The New York Times is reporting that the U.S. military has a policy of ignoring the practice of Afghan police raping Afghan boys, even when it occurs on U.S. military bases:

KABUL, Afghanistan — In his last phone call home, Lance Cpl. 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 American soldiers and Marines have been instructed not to intervene — in some cases, not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases, according to interviews and court records.

Primarily practiced by the Pashtun tribe, bacha bazi is the act of coercing boys to dance for an all male audience, generally in a seductive style and dressed as women. Bacha bazi is also the culturally sanctioned practice of raping little Pashtun boys.

Although illegal in Afghanistan, bacha bazi continues unchecked and unchallenged due to its widespread nature and influential participants. Using a selective translation of Islamic law and a liberal interpretation of what constitutes homosexuality, a damaging compromise has seen the systematic deconstruction of Pashtun perceptions concerning relationships with prepubescent boys and the value of women in society.

For centuries bacha bazi has operated quietly as the solution to the majority of Pashtun males’ partitioned mindset, specifically segregating the need for reproduction and the pursuit of sexual fulfillment. Seen as objects of affection and pride throughout bacha bazi circles, young boys perform weekly for Pashtun men. The boys are admired and coveted as signs of wealth, status and prestige for whomever owns them, not unlike as in cockfighting or horse racing. The element of competition found in both sports is also present in bacha bazi.