The Boys in the Files: What Washington's Own Reports Say About Bacha Bazi, From Its Afghan Allies to the Taliban

A desk in Arlington, Virginia, 9 June 2017

What this section shows: the story starts with a document, and the document was kept secret for seven months.

John F. Sopko signs a letter. He is the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, SIGAR, the official whose job is to audit how the United States spends its money in Afghanistan. The letter is addressed to "Congressional Requestors". It begins: "I am submitting the enclosed report in response to your December 23, 2015, request that SIGAR review the Department of Defense's (DOD's) and Department of State's implementation of the Leahy laws in Afghanistan, and their handling of allegations of child sexual assault by Afghan security forces" (SIGAR 17-47-IP, letter of 9 June 2017, PDF p. 7).

The report behind the letter runs to 68 pages in its public PDF. Its cover carries the words SECRET//NOFORN, secret and not releasable to foreign nationals, and a declassification date of 9 June 2042. Whole paragraphs are blacked out. It is cleared for open publication on 18 January 2018, with two paragraphs revised to reflect corrected information the Pentagon gave during its classification review (cover, PDF p. 1).

What it counts is small. As of 12 August 2016, the Pentagon's policy office was tracking 75 reported "gross violation of human rights" incidents by Afghan security forces. Seven involved child sexual assault: one found credible, five "under review", one found not credible (p. 13). Seven, among forces for which the United States had appropriated more than $71.2 billion since fiscal year 2002, as of 31 March 2017 (p. 1 and note 1).

Five months later a second watchdog, the Pentagon's own Inspector General, reports on the same question and finds sixteen allegations, and more than 300 entries in old military files that nobody had sorted (DODIG-2018-018, pp. 29, 33).

Then the government in Kabul changes. On 15 August 2021 the Taliban take the capital. Every year since, the State Department's Trafficking in Persons Report has examined Afghanistan, and every year it has recorded the same thing. The newest, put online by 8 October 2026, three days before this file was updated, says: "The Taliban again did not report any investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of trafficking crimes." And: "Although bacha bazi is officially banned, the practice continued, and observers reported Taliban members were, in some cases, perpetrators of bacha bazi" (TIP 2026, Afghanistan, Prosecution).

Two governments in Kabul, three kinds of U.S. report, seven claims tested.

A companion Zoomed Vinay Special, on the phrase "Arabian dancing boys", tests where that phrase puts the crime and follows the 2011 Kunduz case and the State Department's 2020 findings. This file does not repeat them.

The seven claims, in seven lines

Read these first. Each is a section below with its own verdict.

• Claim 1, "U.S. soldiers were ordered to look away." No written order was found by either inspector general. Some soldiers said they were told, informally, "There's nothing we can do about it." (SIGAR summary and p. 19; DODIG pp. i, 21–22)
• Claim 2, "Nobody told them to report it." True of child sexual abuse until September 2015; a general rule to report human rights violations dated from November 2011. (SIGAR pp. 8–11; DODIG pp. 25–26)
• Claim 3, "The Pentagon knew how many." It did not: seven cases on one spreadsheet, sixteen across six that disagreed, 300-plus unsorted older reports. (SIGAR p. 13; DODIG pp. 29–34)
• Claim 4, "American money kept flowing to the abusers." It kept flowing to units found to have committed other gross abuses. The record does not show it flowing to a unit found to have abused a child. (SIGAR pp. 13, 15–18)
• Claim 5, "Nobody was ever prosecuted." False for the former government, which convicted soldiers and police, late and mostly junior. (SIGAR p. 13; TIP 2019, 2021, 2022)
• Claim 6, "Under the Taliban it goes on, and nobody is punished." That is what five State Department reports in a row, 2022 to 2026, record. (TIP 2022–2026)
• Claim 7, "It is their culture, or their religion." The record names commanders, police, officials and "the powerful", and records Afghan law, an Afghan president and the Taliban condemning the practice. (DODIG pp. 6, 17, 75; TIP 2025; HR 2023)

The words you need, in plain language

What this section shows: the whole file turns on a few official terms. Learn them once and nothing below will confuse you.

Bacha bazi. Literally "boy play". The State Department's definition, used in its 2018 report and in every report since 2021 (the 2019 and 2020 reports do not use it): "a practice in which men exploit boys for social and sexual entertainment" (TIP 2025 and 2026, opening paragraph). The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, as SIGAR quotes it, says it "generally refers to local powerful individuals keeping one or more boys, typically between 10 to 18 years of age, for use as bodyguards, servants, dancers, and for sexual exploitation and other forms of harassment" (SIGAR p. 1, note 4). SIGAR itself avoids the word, because Afghan law then had no clear definition of it, and writes "child sexual assault" instead.

SIGAR and the DoD Inspector General. Two U.S. watchdogs. SIGAR, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, audits reconstruction money for Congress; its website no longer resolves, and we read its report from the Internet Archive's copy of 24 January 2018. The DoD Inspector General is the Pentagon's own; its report DODIG-2018-018, of 16 November 2017, answered nine questions from Congress.

The Leahy laws. Two U.S. statutes, 10 U.S.C. § 362 for the Defense Department and 22 U.S.C. § 2378d for the State Department, that "generally prohibit" U.S. assistance "to a unit of a foreign security force if the Secretaries of Defense and State have credible information that the unit committed a gross violation of human rights" (SIGAR p. 1). The idea: American money should not train or equip abusers.

Gross violation of human rights. The Leahy laws' phrase. Neither law defines it. Both departments told SIGAR they treat sexual assault of children as one; the Pentagon added a condition, that it be "perpetrated 'under color of law'", meaning in the course of official duties (SIGAR p. 4).

Credible information. The trigger for cutting off a unit. Also undefined in the law. SIGAR found the two departments applied it differently: "State considers reports identified in the New York Times as credible, but DOD requires independent corroboration" (p. 27).

The "notwithstanding" clause. Since 2005 Congress has said the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund (ASFF), the main pot of money for Afghan soldiers and police, "shall be available to the Secretary of Defense, notwithstanding any other provision of law". The Pentagon read that as permission to "forgo implementation of the Leahy Law in specific cases or more broadly if necessary" (SIGAR pp. 3–4).

Remediation, or "all necessary corrective steps". The Leahy law's lawful route back: if the foreign government investigates, tries and punishes the men responsible, the unit can be funded again, and Congress must be told within 15 days (SIGAR pp. 3, 7).

Tier 3. The lowest rank in the State Department's annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report: those who "do not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and are not making significant efforts to do so" (TIP 2026, opening paragraph). Afghanistan was downgraded to Tier 2 Watch List in 2019 and to Tier 3 in 2020, and has been on Tier 3 in every report since, through 2026 (TIP 2019, 2020, 2021–2026).

The Taliban, in U.S. reports. Every TIP report since 2023 states that references to the Taliban "do not denote or imply that the United States recognizes the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan."

The evidence grades used below. Documented: we read the original. Reported: a credible report of a record or event we could not open. Alleged by an agency: a U.S. or Afghan body's allegation, not proved in court. Claimed: a party, an interviewee or an advocate says it, and we say who. Not claimed by this file: what people say that nobody has proved.

Claim 1: the order to look away

What this section shows: the specific accusation in the headline was looked for twice and not found in writing, and the Pentagon's own watchdog found an unwritten version of it in soldiers' memories.

The claim tested: "U.S. soldiers were ordered to look away."

What happened. On 20 September 2015 the New York Times ran a story headlined "U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Sexual Abuse of Boys by Afghan Allies" (SIGAR p. 1, note 3). SIGAR summarises it: the paper reported that such abuse "was 'rampant'" and named Afghan commanders and U.S. soldiers who had reported incidents (p. 1). On 23 December 2015, "a bipartisan group of 93 senators and members of the House of Representatives requested that SIGAR conduct an inquiry" (p. 1). Their letter, printed in the report, quotes the paper quoting "a U.S. military spokesman": "Generally, allegations of child sexual abuse by Afghan military or police personnel would be a matter of domestic Afghan criminal law" and "there would be no express requirement that U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan report it" (p. 36).

How it happened. SIGAR read 48 policy and training documents and interviewed 16 current and former service members (pp. 8, 10); the Pentagon's Inspector General, which had opened its own inquiry on 28 October 2015, did the same (DODIG pp. 1, 21). Both reached the same written answer. SIGAR: "SIGAR found no evidence that U.S. forces were told to ignore human rights abuses or child sexual assault" (summary, PDF p. 3). And: "We found no evidence that DOD condoned gross violations of human rights by Afghan security forces or provided guidance telling service members to ignore any instances" (p. 19). The DoD Inspector General: "We did not identify official guidance that discouraged DoD-affiliated personnel from reporting incidents of child sexual abuse" (p. i).

But the DoD Inspector General did not stop at paper. It recorded what interviewees said they were told. "In some cases, the interviewees explained that they, or someone whom they knew, were told that nothing could be done about child sexual abuse because of Afghanistan's status as a sovereign nation, that it was not a priority for the command, or that it was best to ignore the situation and to let the local police handle it" (p. 21). It gives four accounts, from four separate interviews (pp. 21–22):

1. An interviewee aware of "an Afghan commander keeping little boys for pleasure" reported it and was told "There's nothing we can do about it," "It was out of our control," "This is Afghanistan," or "It's their country."
2. An interviewee who reported an incident involving a 14-year-old boy and a former Afghan Local Police commander described "an attitude of 'Afghan problem, Afghan solution'" when it came to removing police officers.
3. An interviewee said: "There were a couple cases where Service members brought it to commanders' attention, and they said there's nothing we can do. There's no recourse to stop them from bacha bazi. Soldiers [were] told to ignore it and drive on." The report adds that this interviewee "did not have direct evidence".
4. An interviewee said a pre-deployment course at Camp Lejeune told students that if they witnessed child sexual abuse "they should let the local officials or police know and not interfere with the locals", "due to maintaining cooperation with the Afghans."

The report also records: "None of the individuals said that they had actually witnessed child sexual abuse" (p. 21).

On whether soldiers could act: Pentagon policy officials told the Inspector General that U.S. troops who see a child being abused "may intervene as legally appropriate, but they are not obligated to do so" (DODIG p. 39). The Inspector General's legal answer was the same: U.S. forces "are not prohibited from intervening and using reasonable force", but "are under no obligation to intervene" (p. ii). It also records, without names, that a U.S. soldier who "had assaulted an ANDSF member accused of sexually abusing a young boy" faced involuntary separation, and that the action "ultimately was resolved in his favor" (p. 35).

Why it matters. The headline accusation, an order to look away, is the part most often repeated and the part least supported in writing. What is supported is quieter and, for that reason, harder to fix: no written order, but a working assumption that it was an Afghan matter.

What they say in answer. The Pentagon, to SIGAR, on 11 May 2017: "the report acknowledges that there is no evidence DoD condones gross violations of human rights by Afghan Security Forces or provided guidance telling service members to ignore any instances" (SIGAR p. 46, letter of Jedidiah Royal, acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense). The U.S. commander in Afghanistan, "immediately following the September 2015 New York Times story", issued a memo "refuting allegations in the media that from 2010 through 2012, a policy existed within theater that U.S. forces were told to ignore suspicions of sexual abuse of children" (SIGAR p. 11). Canada's armed forces, facing the same accusation about Kandahar in 2006–07, "found no evidence that anyone in the [Canadian Armed Forces] operational chain of command had ever ordered troops to ignore sexual assault of minors" (SIGAR p. 20).

Evidence. 1. SIGAR 17-47-IP, summary (PDF p. 3), pp. 1, 10–11, 19, 20, 36 (Appendix I), 46 (DoD letter of 11 May 2017). 2. DoD Office of Inspector General, DODIG-2018-018, 16 November 2017, pp. i–ii, 1, 21–22, 35, 39, 85.

Verdict on this claim. Documented: no written order was found, by two inspectors general. Claimed, by interviewees whose accounts the DoD Inspector General recorded: informal messages that nothing could be done. The accurate sentence is not "soldiers were ordered to ignore it". It is "two inspectors general found no such order, and the Pentagon's own found soldiers who said they were told, in effect, that it was not their business."

Claim 2: the rule that was missing

What this section shows: here the record is unambiguous, and it is the strongest finding in both reports.

The claim tested: "Nobody told them to report it."

What happened. "DOD did not have guidance specifically requiring the reporting of human rights violations in Afghanistan until November 2011" (SIGAR p. 8). Training before that "did not include any references to human rights violations, gross violations of human rights, or child sexual assault" (p. 9). The first explicit order to report child sexual abuse came on 20 September 2015, the day the newspaper story ran: a memorandum from the U.S. commander saying he "expected all suspected child sexual abuse to be immediately reported through the chain of command", followed on 28 September by a fragmentary order to all Resolute Support personnel (DODIG pp. 25–26). The DoD Inspector General's conclusion: "The DoD did not conduct training for personnel deployed or deploying to Afghanistan before 2015 on identifying, responding to, or reporting suspected instances of child sexual abuse" (p. i).

How it happened. What deploying sailors were taught instead is quoted in SIGAR's report. The Navy's cultural-awareness training for Afghanistan, in its 2009 and 2016 versions, said: "Because even casual interaction with women is taboo, it is not uncommon for men to participate in sex acts with young men and boys. By Western standards, this is regarded as both homosexuality and pedophilia. This is not the case in Afghanistan … There are even cases of men having sexual relations with young men and boys in public" (SIGAR p. 10 and note 33).

That is the Navy's training text, a generalisation about a whole country, and it is quoted here because it is the evidence, not because it is true of Afghans. SIGAR's comment: "this training does not judge the practice and, unlike other sections of the training, does not provide guidance to personnel on what they should or should not do if they encounter it" (p. 10). The Marine Corps guide told Marines, about Afghan culture in general, to "understand the culture, accept it without making judgments"; on pedophilia, it said some Afghan men "joke among themselves" about it, told Marines to be prepared to meet that attitude and to "move on", and gave "no specific guidance" on what to do if they met the abuse itself (DODIG p. 23). In September 2015 the U.S. command's own legal office wrote the correction into its new training slides: "bacha baazi [sic] ('boy play') is not merely a 'cultural issue'" but a violation of Afghan and international law (DODIG p. 26).

Then the interviews. Of SIGAR's sixteen service members, one reported an incident and never learned what came of it; another said he and his comrades "thought it would be best to 'leave it alone'"; a third "heard the sounds of Afghan men and boys screaming in 'what sounded like sex'" and said he and others "talked and laughed about it, but did not take action to address it" (p. 10). The third man had been briefed on his first tour to report such incidents; on his second, "All the service members at his base understood that sex occurred between boys and ANP personnel", meaning the Afghan National Police, and "they did not take action to report it" (p. 19). "None of the four interviewees with direct knowledge of child sexual assault reported the incident to U.S. government officials" (p. 19).

Why it matters. A soldier who is never told that something is reportable mostly does not report it. Both inspectors general named this gap among the reasons the count stayed low. SIGAR: "the absence of explicit guidance and training from DOD on reporting child sexual assault prior to 2015 may have caused confusion as to what to do if a service member became aware of an incident" (p. 19).

What they say in answer. The Pentagon disputed the date. Its letter to SIGAR said: "Commander, U.S. Forces - Afghanistan (USFOR-A), issued a tactical directive on November 5, 2011, that contained explicit guidance for U.S. personnel to report suspected cases of the ANDSF violating the human rights of a citizen or detainee" (SIGAR p. 47). SIGAR accepted the directive and replied that it "did not specifically mention child sexual assault" (p. 52). The Pentagon also called SIGAR's interview-based conclusions "speculative and not well-substantiated" (p. 47); SIGAR answered that it "never claimed that they were a representative sample" (p. 52). To its own Inspector General the Pentagon went further: "There should be no such confusion; U.S. military personnel do not require explicit guidance to know that child sexual assault in all cases is wrong, must not [be] tolerated, and requires informing the chain of command" (DODIG p. 86, letter signed by Robert Story Karem, performing the duties of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy).

Evidence. 1. SIGAR 17-47-IP, pp. 8–11, 19, 47 (DoD letter), 52 (SIGAR response). 2. DODIG-2018-018, pp. i, 23, 25–26, Appendix C (training slides), 86. 3. Navy Center for Language, Regional Expertise, and Culture, Operational Cultural Awareness Training–Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, versions of 22 June 2009 and March 2016, as quoted by SIGAR (p. 10, note 33). Not read in the original.

Verdict on this claim. Documented. Until September 2015 there was no U.S. military rule that named child sexual abuse by Afghan forces as something to report, and the training soldiers received described the practice without telling them to act. The Pentagon's best answer, that soldiers should not have needed a rule, is an argument about what soldiers ought to have known. It is not evidence that they were told.

Claim 3: the count nobody had

What this section shows: the numbers are small because the counting was broken, and both watchdogs said so in terms.

The claim tested: "The Pentagon knew how many boys were abused."

What happened. SIGAR's count: "As of August 12, 2016, the office was tracking 75 reported gross violation of human rights incidents: 7 involved child sexual assault, 46 involved other gross violations of human rights, and 22 were classified at a level above Secret … These incidents ranged in date from 2010 through 2016" (p. 13). Of the seven, "1 that the Leahy Forum found to be credible, 5 that remain under review, and 1 that was found not credible. Five of the seven involved MOI units, and two involved MOD units" (p. 13): five police, two army.

The seven, as the report describes them, with the people involved left unnamed here:

• The one found credible concerned a girl, not a boy. "Two ANA Special Operations Command (ANASOC) noncommissioned officers (NCOs) attempted to sexually assault a girl to coerce information from her mother. Following a trial, both NCOs were … sentenced to 6 years of confinement" (p. 13). The DoD Inspector General adds the detail that matters most: it happened on 1 June 2015 in Deh Rawud district, Uruzgan, and the three Afghan commandos who found the two NCOs "immediately reported it" up their own chain of command (DODIG p. 12).
• Five "under review". Among them: an Afghan Local Police commander, named in the report, who "allegedly imprisoned a 14-year-old boy, chained him to a bed, and then physically and sexually assaulted him"; the U.S. command "is awaiting results from an Afghan investigation" (p. 13). And a 2015 report from Badghis province in which "a 10-year-old girl said four policemen and other gunmen gang-raped her. The Afghan government reported that it conducted an investigation and determined that this was a false claim"; the U.S. command was "considering closing the incident" (p. 13).
• One found not credible. A 2012 allegation against a district police chief in Garmsir, Helmand, raised by a Marine Corps major and carried in the 2015 newspaper story. The State Department's human rights bureau considered it credible; the joint Leahy Forum, in October 2015, decided there was not credible information (p. 13). SIGAR reviewed the case files and found that "neither investigation specifically looked at allegations of child sexual assault" by the police chief (p. 27). A separate investigation recorded by the DoD Inspector General "disclosed no additional evidence" of sex crimes against juveniles by a Helmand district police chief linked to an August 2012 insider attack (DODIG pp. 34–35). No court has found against him, and we do not name him.

How it happened. SIGAR said plainly that seven was not the number: "the full extent of child sexual assault committed by members of the Afghan security forces may never be known" (summary, PDF p. 4). Of 37 individuals and organisations it interviewed outside the Leahy process, "Twenty-four … said they were aware of child sexual assault incidents or related exploitation, such as bacha bazi, by Afghan security forces" (p. 18). One NGO representative: "Bacha bazi is very sensitive, and those involved are in high positions within the Afghan military, which makes going after these individuals very difficult" (p. 19).

The DoD Inspector General, counting a few months later, found 16 allegations "reported to and tracked by the DoD between 2010 and 2016", and said it "could not confirm that the 16 allegations represented the total number" (p. 29). The reason is in its Figure 1: six Defense Department spreadsheets, each counting differently. The policy office's tracker had 7 child cases; the command's human-rights tracker 5; its sexual-assault tracker 10; a regional command's tracker 1; the new "official" tracker 9; Central Command's legal tracker 7 (pp. 30–32). No one list held all sixteen.

After the newspaper story the Pentagon asked two commands to search their records back to 2001. Central Command's first answer was "a spreadsheet with 9,704 rows of potential incidents" (SIGAR p. 30), padded, among other things, with reports that mentioned "grapes", because the word contains "rape" (p. 31, note 61). Refined, the two commands' lists together came to "more than 600 rows", about 400 from Central Command and 200 from Special Operations Command (p. 31). The DoD Inspector General read them and found "more than 300 entries containing excerpts of reports describing allegations of child sexual abuse by ANDSF personnel, dated between 2005 and 2015" (DODIG p. 33). Special Operations Command, the Inspector General found, had not searched for the word "rape" (p. 34). A NATO database that might hold more "could not be located" (p. 34). The Pentagon's answer to SIGAR on what it would do with the historical list: it "has not made a decision on how to handle these incidents" (SIGAR p. 31).

The machinery thinned as the numbers were needed. The analyst who had built the only consolidated tracker left in August 2016 and "was replaced by someone with no past experience" (SIGAR p. 29); the joint Leahy Forum did not meet from September 2016 until January 2017 (p. 30). And the troops were leaving: "more than 110,000" at the 2011 peak, 64,000 in 2013, 25,000 in 2014, 6,939 on 17 September 2016 (p. 20). SIGAR's judgement: "DOD may have missed the window of opportunity to use the large U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan to collect information" (p. 20).

Why it matters. "Seven cases" is a statement about a spreadsheet, not about Afghanistan.

What they say in answer. The Pentagon, to its Inspector General: "Reports of incidents from non-DoD personnel typically lack information to identify an individual perpetrator or his unit, which significantly complicates DoD's ability to apply the Leahy Law to such instances" (DODIG p. 86). The Pentagon, to SIGAR: "If and when DoD reviews these incidents, the Department will make a credibility determination based on the information available" (SIGAR p. 31). After the Inspector General's report, the Pentagon said it had launched "a central database accessible to all stakeholders in July 2017" (DODIG p. iv).

Evidence. 1. SIGAR 17-47-IP, summary (PDF p. 4), pp. 13–15, 18–20, 27, 29–31. 2. DODIG-2018-018, pp. iv, 12, 29–35, 86.

Verdict on this claim. Documented: the U.S. government did not know how many. Its own inspectors general said the count was incomplete, inconsistent and, in SIGAR's words, may never be known. Seven and sixteen are floors, not totals.

Claim 4: the money that kept flowing

What this section shows: the money did keep flowing to Afghan units found to have committed serious abuses. The record does not show it flowing to a unit found to have abused children.

The claim tested: "American money kept flowing to the abusers."

What happened. "Although DOD and State have confirmed that some units of the Afghan security forces have committed gross violations of human rights, the Secretary of Defense has used the notwithstanding clause in the DOD Appropriations Act to continue providing ASFF funding for select training, equipment, and other assistance to some of the implicated units" (SIGAR p. 15). On 3 December 2015 the Pentagon's policy office "approved use of the notwithstanding clause to allow DOD to continue providing assistance to 12 Afghan security force units implicated in 14 gross violation of human rights incidents in 2013. None of these incidents involved child sexual assault … Ultimately, it withheld $212,120 for U.S.-based training, site improvements and minor construction, and transportation for trainees" (p. 17). For units implicated in 2014, the acting Under Secretary "relied on the notwithstanding clause for eight of the nine" (p. 18). The amount withheld from army units was never given: "DOD did not provide the amount it withheld from the MOD units" (p. 14).

How it happened. The DoD Leahy law has its own lawful exits, each reported to Congress within 15 days: an exception once the foreign government has taken "all necessary corrective steps", an exception for disaster relief and other humanitarian or national security emergencies, and a waiver for "extraordinary circumstances" (p. 3). The notwithstanding clause was another exit, which the Pentagon said "does not require formal congressional notification" (p. 4). Defense Secretary Ash Carter's guidance of 1 May 2015 let the U.S. commander "petition" to keep funding an implicated unit where cutting it off "would present significant risks to U.S. or coalition forces", would "significantly undermine" the mission, or where consulting Afghan officials "would reveal DOD's sources and methods" (p. 16). In one redacted case the Pentagon wrote that restricting assistance "would place U.S. and NATO forces at significant increased risk of attack" (p. 18). No legal opinions were written; the Pentagon's lawyers said "no legal decision memos or opinions on applying the notwithstanding clause were required because applying the clause is a policy decision" (p. 17). The DoD Inspector General found such decisions were made only "about once a year" (DODIG p. iii).

The child-assault case that was found credible went the other, lawful way. After the Afghan army convicted its two NCOs, the Pentagon used the "all necessary corrective steps" exception and told Congress on 25 August 2016 (SIGAR p. 13).

Why it matters. The claim people repeat, that U.S. money kept paying the men who abused boys, is not what the record shows. What it shows is that the Pentagon, for force protection, kept paying Afghan units credibly found to have committed other gross violations (on the tracker these include "extrajudicial killings or torture of detainees", p. 14), by an exit that did not require telling Congress, and withheld $212,120 from police units. SIGAR called the security concern "understandable", and then: "DOD's continuing to provide assistance to units for which the department has credible information of a gross violation of human rights undermines efforts by U.S. government officials to engage with the Afghan government on the importance of respect for human rights and rule of law" (p. 31).

What they say in answer. SIGAR put one item before Congress: if Congress thinks this use of the clause "is inconsistent with the intent of the Leahy law, Congress may want to consider prohibiting DOD from applying the notwithstanding clause to the DOD Leahy law" (p. 32). The Pentagon answered "Non-Concur. DoD opposes the removal of the Secretary of Defense's authority to balance the implementation of the DoD Leahy law under the unique circumstances in Afghanistan with national security objectives and the protection of U.S. forces" (p. 48), and in its covering letter said that removing the clause "would remove the Secretary of Defense's flexibility" (p. 47). SIGAR replied that Congress had already given that flexibility "through the exceptions and waiver it included in the DOD Leahy law" (p. 52). In December 2017, during declassification, the Pentagon corrected an earlier answer and said it "has identified no known uses of ASFF notwithstanding authority other than in implementation of the Leahy Law" (p. 17; cover note, PDF p. 1). We found no later public record that Congress acted on SIGAR's suggestion before U.S. funding for the Afghan forces ended with the fall of Kabul.

Evidence. 1. SIGAR 17-47-IP, pp. 3–4, 13–18, 31–32, 46–48 (DoD comments), 52. 2. DODIG-2018-018, pp. iii, 11–12, 14, 59.

Verdict on this claim. Documented in part. U.S. money did continue to flow to Afghan units credibly found to have committed gross human rights violations, by a route that did not require telling Congress. Not documented: that it flowed to any unit credibly found to have sexually abused a child. The only such unit on the record was funded again only after its men were tried and jailed.

Claim 5: the prosecutions nobody mentions

What this section shows: the old title of this file said nobody was prosecuted. For the former government that is wrong, and we correct it here.

The claim tested: "Nobody was ever prosecuted."

What happened. Under the Islamic Republic, prosecutions happened, late and low. The 2015 case ended in two six-year sentences (SIGAR p. 13). An Afghan official gave SIGAR "a list of cases involving MOI officers prosecuted for pederasty by the AGO", the Attorney General's Office (p. 23). The DoD Inspector General found "at least 11 reports" in old U.S. files in which Afghan officials told U.S. forces "that they had investigated arrested, or imprisoned [sic] ANDSF officials accused of sexually abusing children", though it "could not verify what actions, if any, were taken in those cases" (DODIG p. 38).

The State Department's later reports carry the story on. In its June 2019 report, the Afghan army had opened investigations into 13 officers "for bacha bazi, including witnessing and failure to report bacha bazi", and "Military authorities sentenced one perpetrator of bacha bazi to four months' imprisonment"; the government "did not report the status of the other 12" (TIP 2019, Prosecution). Its June 2020 report downgraded Afghanistan to Tier 3, found "a government policy or pattern of sexual slavery in government compounds", and wrote that "the government has never prosecuted a police officer" for bacha bazi; the convictions it recorded that year were of five civilian perpetrators, under other laws (TIP 2020, introduction and Prosecution). In its July 2021 report, covering the Republic's last full year: "The judiciary convicted seven Afghan National Police (ANP) officers of bacha bazi, murder, rape, assault, and sodomy in one case and separately, two Afghan National Army (ANA) officers for bacha bazi during the reporting period. These were the first known cases where the government charged uniformed police officers directly with bacha bazi … Courts sentenced one ANP officer to death, two received 30-year prison sentences, and the remaining four received 24-year prison sentences. Courts sentenced the two ANA officers to 18 months' imprisonment." Nine more were convicted in a case involving the abuse of 165 male students in Logar schools, with sentences "between five and 22 years" (TIP 2021, Prosecution).

How it happened. The law came late. When SIGAR wrote, there was, in the human rights commission's words, "no clear Afghan legal definition of bacha bazi" (p. 1, note 4). President Ashraf Ghani signed a new anti-trafficking law on 12 December 2016; published on 22 February 2017, it criminalised "Exploitation: Taking advantage of the victim of trafficking in persons through buying, selling, sexual exploitation, dancing (bacha bazi)" (pp. 21–22). A new Penal Code followed; under it, the State Department reports, "Article 510 of the new 2018 criminal code criminalized sex trafficking and labor trafficking, including bacha bazi", and Article 511 set 10 to 16 years' imprisonment "if the victim was a woman or child, or exploited in bacha bazi" (TIP 2019, Prosecution).

Who got prosecuted mattered as much as how many. The army had its own prosecutors; police cases went to the Attorney General, "at which point MOI officials often have no visibility into whether anyone is held accountable for a particular crime" (SIGAR p. 23). In July 2016 the U.S. training command told the Interior Minister that because "the MOI provided only cursory reports on 2 of 24 cases", it would "withhold the MOI travel budget" (p. 24). An Afghan official told SIGAR that "maybe most of the cases are not reported or investigated"; that, as far as he knew, low-level officers and soldiers had been prosecuted for child abuse; and, asked why only they, that senior officers have money and power and can threaten people into silence (p. 21; SIGAR paraphrases his answer). The State Department said the same in 2021: the government "did not investigate or prosecute many high-level security officials or government employees for bacha bazi, despite continuing reports of complicity" (TIP 2021, introduction). And in its last months it stopped: between 1 April and 15 August 2021 the government "did not prosecute any security officers for Bacha bazi"; eight police officers arrested that year were charged with "moral crimes," sodomy, or other crimes instead (TIP 2022, Prosecution).

Why it matters. "Nobody was prosecuted" is a strong sentence, and it is false for the Republic. The true sentence is harder on everyone: prosecutions began only after a newspaper story and a congressional letter, reached mostly junior men, peaked in 2020–21, and then the state that brought them collapsed.

What they say in answer. The former government's answer is on the record. After the 2015 story, "President Ghani publicly condemned the sexual abuse of children and directed the Afghan defense and security forces to prevent the recurrence of any such acts", and ordered a committee of the human rights commission, the Interior Ministry and the Attorney General's Office "to investigate and prosecute child sexual assault incidents" (SIGAR p. 21). The Pentagon told its Inspector General that "until recently, Afghan law made it difficult for the Afghan Attorney General's office to prosecute cases involving bacha bazi because acts associated with the practice were not criminalized" (DODIG p. 85).

Evidence. 1. SIGAR 17-47-IP, pp. 1 (note 4), 13, 21–24. 2. DODIG-2018-018, pp. 12, 37–38, 85. 3. U.S. Department of State, Trafficking in Persons Report 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022, Afghanistan chapters, introductions and Prosecution sections.

Verdict on this claim. False as stated, for the former government. The record documents convictions in 2015, in the State Department's 2019 report (covering April 2018 to March 2019) and in its 2021 report (April 2020 to March 2021), including death and 30-year sentences for police officers; the 2020 report had said no police officer had ever been prosecuted for bacha bazi. Documented, and still damning: those prosecutions were few, late, mostly of junior men, and had stopped before the Taliban took Kabul.

Claim 6: the Taliban years

What this section shows: since August 2021 the U.S. government has recorded the same finding five times, and its 2024, 2025 and 2026 reports all list Afghanistan among the places with a "policy or pattern" of state-linked trafficking.

The claim tested: "Under the Taliban it goes on, and nobody is punished."

What happened. The Taliban took Kabul on 15 August 2021. The State Department's first report afterwards: "After August 15, the Taliban did not report any investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of trafficking crimes" (TIP 2022, Prosecution). It has said the same every year since. In 2023 it added that "the Taliban and its 'commanders' were in some cases perpetrators of bacha bazi; reports indicated incidents of bacha bazi increased in the reporting period" (TIP 2023, Prosecution). In 2025: "Impunity was a significant problem among the Taliban, and there was no formal system of accountability" (TIP 2025, Prosecution).

The 2026 report, covering 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026 and put online by 8 October 2026, finds "a pattern of sexual slavery (bacha bazi …)" and: "The Taliban again did not report any investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of trafficking crimes", "The Taliban did not report any investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of Taliban members for alleged complicity in trafficking crimes", and "The Taliban did not make meaningful efforts to protect victims of bacha bazi or eliminate the practice" (TIP 2026, introduction, Prosecution, Protection). Its trafficking profile: "Civil society experts indicate boys are more vulnerable to trafficking than girls, especially in bacha bazi, in which victims are typically between ages 10 and 18 and are sometimes kidnapped or sold by impoverished families. Observers report cases of bacha bazi by the Taliban and nearly all armed groups." The same report lists Afghanistan, with an asterisk, among twelve countries "with a documented 'policy or pattern'" of trafficking, including "sexual slavery in government camps" or the use of child soldiers; the asterisk says the report assesses "the actions of the Taliban and Afghan ministries without implying recognition of the Taliban or another entity as the government of Afghanistan" (TIP 2026, State-Sponsored Trafficking in Persons).

How it happened. The reports describe a legal system emptied out. "According to observers, the Taliban have purported to revoke Afghanistan's constitution and criminal code, including all laws on the protection of children" and "prohibit lawyers from referencing the Afghanistan penal code enacted under the pre-August 15, 2021 government in court" (TIP 2025, Prosecution). Victims who come forward risk punishment: "Authorities often placed child trafficking victims in detention centers alongside adults where children experienced unlawful prison labor or conditions with indicators of forced labor, physical abuse, and sexual abuse", and "sex trafficking victims, including victims of bacha bazi, did not report their exploitation out of fear of punishment from the Taliban and social stigma" (TIP 2026, Protection). The Taliban acknowledge using "hudud punishments (corporal punishments for perceived moral crimes), including for engaging in a sexual relationship outside marriage", which, the State Department says, "discourages sex trafficking victims from reporting exploitation" (TIP 2026, Protection).

The United Nations, which verifies cases one by one, recorded in 2024 "Sexual violence against 6 children (2 boys, 4 girls)", attributed "to the Taliban (5) and unidentified perpetrators (1)" (UN Secretary-General, Children and armed conflict, A/79/878–S/2025/247, 17 June 2025, para. 16). Those are verified cases, not an estimate of the whole.

There are also reported incidents. The State Department's human rights report for 2023 records that "Taliban 'commanders' reportedly were involved in bacha bazi", and that in August 2023, at a wedding in Badakhshan province, "a dispute reportedly arose between two Taliban commanders over a boy associated with bacha bazi", which "escalated to gunfire, resulting in the death of two Taliban members" (2023 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, Afghanistan, Section 1). The next year's human rights report, published in August 2025 in a shortened format, does not mention bacha bazi at all; we searched its full text.

Why it matters. Under the Republic there was a law, a court and a U.S. lever. Since 2021 the record shows a ban on paper, no reported case, and no protection for a boy who speaks.

What they say in answer. The Taliban's answers are on the U.S. record, in the State Department's words. "The Taliban publicly stated that bacha bazi was against Islamic law" (2023 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, Afghanistan, Section 6). In December 2024 "the Taliban so-called emir issued a decree declaring trafficking in persons illegal under Sharia", directing ministries to "investigate human trafficking crimes" and "sentence convicted traffickers to prison", though "the Taliban did not report implementation of such measures" (TIP 2025, Prevention). "The Ministry of Interior claimed the Taliban arrested 300 traffickers over the past three years without providing further details" (TIP 2025, Prosecution). On children in their ranks: "The Taliban denied recruiting or using child soldiers, claiming their code of conduct prohibited boys with no facial hair from being allowed onto the battlefield or military bases" (TIP 2025), and they have "a 'commission for the purification of the ranks,' composed of senior Taliban members, to identify and demobilize children"; an international organisation "secured the release of 58 children from their ranks" (TIP 2026, Protection). The UN Secretary-General separately recorded, for 2024, engagement with the Taliban "which resulted in the reintegration of 58 children" (A/79/878, para. 21); neither document says whether these are the same children. In January 2026 the Taliban introduced a new edict "framed as a so-called 'criminal code'" that "prohibited trafficking and prescribed mandatory sentences of one to three years' imprisonment"; the State Department says it "did not provide a clear definition of human trafficking" and "penalties were not sufficiently stringent" (TIP 2026, Prosecution). The UN mission describes a Taliban leader's decree on "Criminal Rules of Courts", sent to all courts in a circular dated 7 January 2026 (UNAMA, January–March 2026 update, pp. 5–6). We think these are the same instrument; neither document says so.

Evidence. 1. U.S. Department of State, Trafficking in Persons Report, Afghanistan chapters 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 (page dated 30 September 2025) and 2026 (page dated 8 October 2026); 2024, 2025 and 2026 reports, "State-Sponsored Trafficking in Persons" sections; 2026 report, Child Soldiers Prevention Act section. 2. U.S. Department of State, 2023 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Afghanistan (April 2024), Sections 1 and 6; 2024 Country Reports (August 2025), full text searched. 3. UN Secretary-General, Children and armed conflict, A/79/878–S/2025/247, 17 June 2025, paras. 13–25. 4. UNAMA, Update on the human rights situation in Afghanistan, January–March 2026, pp. 5–6.

Verdict on this claim. Documented, as the U.S. government records it. Five consecutive State Department reports, covering 15 August 2021 to 31 March 2026, record no Taliban investigation, prosecution or conviction for trafficking, a ban that is "officially" in force and not enforced, and Taliban members named "in some cases" as perpetrators. The Taliban's claim of 300 arrests is their claim, with no details; the same report finds that the Taliban "made no anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts".

Claim 7: culture, religion, and the people the record names

What this section shows: the record names the people who did it and the institutions that condemned it. It does not blame a people or a faith, and neither do we.

The claim tested: "It is their culture, or their religion."

What happened. Some U.S. documents did describe the abuse as cultural. The DoD Inspector General found that "DoD cultural-awareness training for U.S. personnel deploying to Afghanistan and two Human Terrain System Reports identified child sexual abuse as a culturally accepted practice in Afghanistan" (DODIG p. 21). The Navy text quoted under Claim 2 is one of them. Those are the documents' characterisations, written by U.S. trainers and researchers, and neither inspector general adopted them as a finding of its own; SIGAR faulted the Navy text for giving no guidance (SIGAR p. 10).

Against them stands the Afghan record. The Afghan Constitution, Article 54, as the Inspector General quotes it, required the state to protect "the physical and spiritual health of the family, especially of the child" and to work toward "the elimination of related traditions contrary to the principles of the sacred religion of Islam." Article 427 of the Penal Code then in force: "A person who commits adultery or pederasty shall be sentenced to long-term imprisonment", with aggravation where the victim "is not yet 18 years old" or the offender "has authority" over the victim (DODIG pp. 17, 75). On 23 September 2015 Afghanistan's president said: "The laws, culture, and religious values of the people of Afghanistan recognize sexual abuse of children as one of the severest crimes and violations of human rights" (DODIG p. 75). The country's statutory human rights commission, in a 2014 national inquiry, concluded that "the main motive for Bachabazi [sic] is sexual abuse" and that it "is considered as a kind of trafficking in persons" (AIHRC, The Causes and Consequences of Bachabazi in Afghanistan, pp. 24, 32, as quoted at DODIG p. 6). The 2017 law and the 2018 Penal Code criminalised it by name (SIGAR p. 22; TIP 2019).

The Taliban, too, condemn it in religious terms, as the U.S. record reports them. "The Taliban publicly stated that bacha bazi was against Islamic law" (HR 2023, Section 6). Their December 2024 decree declared trafficking "illegal under Sharia" (TIP 2025, Prevention).

How it happened. Who does it, according to the record? The answers are specific. The U.S. Labor Department in 2016: "some government officials, including members of the Afghan National Police, Afghan Local Police, and the Afghan Border Police, have boys for bacha bazi" (as quoted at DODIG p. 5). State and UN reports describe "powerful or wealthy local figures and businessmen" (DODIG p. 5). The State Department in 2023: "In northern provinces, many bacha bazi traffickers were community elders or private citizens. In southern provinces, bacha bazi perpetrators were more commonly officials from the pre-August 15, 2021, government", and survivors' "overwhelming understanding that bacha bazi is committed by the powerful, including community leaders, and previous military commanders, police, and government officials" (TIP 2023, Trafficking Profile). In 2025 and 2026: the Taliban and "nearly all armed groups" (TIP 2025 and 2026, Trafficking Profile). And the victims, in the record's words, are boys "from poor families or [who] do not have guardians" (DODIG p. 6, summarising the AIHRC), some "kidnapped or sold by impoverished families" (TIP 2026).

The one credible case in SIGAR's count was reported by Afghan soldiers against their own sergeants (DODIG p. 12). The Logar schools abuse came to light after activists spent six months interviewing hundreds of boys; Afghan bodies then investigated, though with results the State Department called "inconsistent with victim reports" (TIP 2021, Prosecution). In these files, many of the people who documented the crime most closely were Afghan: soldiers, a human rights commission, an official with a list of prosecutions.

Why it matters. "It is their culture" is the sentence that let the training slides say nothing, and that lets readers abroad turn a crime by powerful men into a verdict on a nation or a faith. The record shows a crime of power, by men with guns, office or money against boys without them, condemned in Afghan law and, in words if not in enforcement, by the Taliban.

What they say in answer. The defence of the training material is its disclaimer: the Navy's presentation said it was an "introduction to cultural norms and not intended to countermand or supersede current rules of engagement", and told sailors to ask their chain of command when unsure (DODIG p. 23). The U.S. command's own answer, from September 2015, is the better one: "bacha baazi [sic] ('boy play') is not merely a 'cultural issue'" (DODIG p. 26).

Evidence. 1. DODIG-2018-018, pp. 5–6, 12, 17, 21, 23, 26, 75 (Appendix B), 85. 2. SIGAR 17-47-IP, pp. 19, 21–22. 3. U.S. Department of State, Trafficking in Persons Report 2019, 2021, 2023, 2025, 2026, Afghanistan; 2023 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Afghanistan, Section 6.

Verdict on this claim. Not supported by the record. The U.S. documents attribute bacha bazi to named categories of powerful men, the Afghan state's own law and leaders condemned it, and the Taliban call it un-Islamic. The documents that called it "culturally accepted" were U.S. training papers and research reports; the U.S. command in Afghanistan rejected that framing in its own 2015 training slides, though the Navy's March 2016 training still carried the old text (SIGAR p. 10, note 33).

Read the actual document

What this section shows: the paragraph SIGAR's report turns on, in full. From SIGAR 17-47-IP, summary, PDF page 4:

"While DOD and State have taken steps to identify and investigate child sexual assault incidents, the full extent of child sexual assault committed by members of the Afghan security forces may never be known. DOD officials said they do not believe that the 75 incidents on the OUSD-P tracker represent all child sexual assault and other gross violation of human rights incidents in Afghanistan. This may be because individuals and organizations with knowledge of child sexual assault incidents often lack specific details or are reluctant to share information with the U.S. government. In addition, while some U.S. personnel reported hearing or seeing possible instances of child sexual assault, they did not have explicit guidance on reporting the information to their commands."

The strongest case for the other side

What this section shows: the best defence of the U.S. agencies, of the former Afghan government and of the Taliban, put as strongly as the record allows. Weigh it before the verdict.

For the Pentagon. It was not hiding an order, because there was none; two independent inspectors general looked and found no written instruction to ignore abuse. It reported what it had: the U.S. commander wrote to both Afghan ministers on 13 October 2015 listing eight allegations and asking for investigations (DODIG p. 37). It used the Leahy law's lawful remedy in the one credible child case and told Congress (SIGAR p. 13). Its use of the notwithstanding clause was legal, written into every ASFF appropriation by Congress since 2005, and aimed at protecting U.S. and allied troops fighting beside those units; SIGAR itself called the concern "understandable" (pp. 3, 31). Reports from people outside the Defense Department "typically lack information to identify an individual perpetrator or his unit" (DODIG p. 86). It accepted every SIGAR recommendation addressed to it and seven of eight from its own Inspector General, and it built a central database by July 2017 (SIGAR letter, PDF p. 7; DODIG p. iv).

For the State Department. It treated newspaper reports as credible when the Pentagon would not, and in 2016 funded two programmes of about $1 million each against bacha bazi (SIGAR pp. 25, 27).

For the former Afghan government. It had no law that named the crime until 2017, and it wrote one, then a Penal Code, with U.S. help. Its president condemned the abuse in religious and legal terms in 2015. Its army prosecuted the one credible case, after Afghan soldiers reported their own sergeants. By 2020–21 its courts were sentencing police officers to death and 30 years, in what the State Department called "the first known cases where the government charged uniformed police officers directly with bacha bazi" (TIP 2021).

For the Taliban. They say the practice is against Islamic law, they have declared trafficking illegal under Sharia, they say their code bars beardless boys from their ranks, they have a commission to remove children from their forces, and 58 children were released after engagement with them (HR 2023; TIP 2025, 2026; UN, A/79/878). In 2026 they issued a written edict with penalties for trafficking. And the State Department's findings against them rest largely on unnamed "observers".

Our reply, briefly. Each defence is real, and each leaves the central finding standing. No order is not the same as a rule to report, and there was no such rule until 2015. A legal exit is still an exit. A late law and a handful of convictions are not accountability for a decade. And a ban that, in five years of U.S. reporting, has produced no reported prosecution is a ban on paper.

What is proved, what is only alleged, and what we refuse to claim

What this section shows: every claim above, placed in exactly one column.

Documented, read by us in the original: - SIGAR 17-47-IP: signed 9 June 2017, classified SECRET//NOFORN, cleared for open publication 18 January 2018; requested by 93 senators and House members on 23 December 2015. - Both inspectors general found no written guidance telling U.S. personnel to ignore child sexual abuse. - No U.S. military guidance named child sexual abuse as reportable before 20–28 September 2015, and there was no training on it before 2015; the Navy text, the Marine guide's "move on", and the 2015 slides' "not merely a 'cultural issue'". - The counts: 75 incidents and 7 child cases (1 credible, 5 under review, 1 not credible) as of 12 August 2016; 16 allegations 2010–2016 on six trackers that disagree; 9,704 rows, then more than 600; more than 300 historical entries. - The credible case: two ANA commando NCOs, attempted sexual assault of a girl, 1 June 2015, reported by fellow soldiers, six years each; unit remediated, Congress notified 25 August 2016. - The notwithstanding decisions: 12 units and 14 incidents of 2013, none involving child sexual assault, $212,120 withheld; eight of nine units in 2014; the Pentagon's "Non-Concur". - That interviewees gave the DoD Inspector General the accounts quoted (not that the accounts are true). - Article 54 of the Afghan Constitution, Article 427 of the Penal Code, President Ghani's statement of 23 September 2015 and the 2017 law's text, as quoted in the U.S. reports. - The State Department's findings, 2019 to 2026, as it wrote them: the convictions recorded in the 2019 and 2021 reports, and the 2020 report's finding that no police officer had ever been prosecuted for bacha bazi; no security officer prosecuted April–August 2021; five Taliban-era reports with no investigation, prosecution or conviction reported; the Taliban's statement that bacha bazi is against Islamic law; the December 2024 decree; the January 2026 edict; Afghanistan on the "policy or pattern" list in the 2024, 2025 and 2026 reports. - The UN's verified count for 2024: sexual violence against six children, two of them boys, five cases attributed to the Taliban.

Reported (credible reports of records or events we could not open): - The contents of the New York Times articles of 20 and 21 September 2015, beyond what SIGAR and the congressional letter quote. - The Badakhshan wedding shooting of August 2023, as the State Department reports it ("reportedly"). - The Afghan courts' judgments in the 2020–21 police and army cases and the Logar case, known to us only through the State Department.

Alleged by an agency, not proved in court: - The five child cases left "under review" in 2017, including the chained 14-year-old; their outcome is not in any document we found. - That Taliban members are "in some cases" perpetrators of bacha bazi (the State Department's observers).

Claimed, and by whom: - That soldiers were told "nothing could be done" or to "drive on" (interviewees, recorded by the DoD Inspector General; one said he had no direct evidence). - That 300 traffickers were arrested (the Taliban Interior Ministry, without details). - That Taliban rules bar beardless boys from the battlefield (the Taliban, as reported by the State Department). - That bacha bazi is "culturally accepted" (U.S. training material and two Human Terrain reports, as described by the DoD Inspector General).

Not claimed by this file, because nobody has proved it: - That U.S. soldiers were ordered, in writing or by a named commander, to ignore the abuse. - That U.S. money was kept flowing to a unit credibly found to have sexually abused a child. - That the Garmsir district police chief, or the Afghan Local Police commander in the under-review case, committed the acts alleged. Neither has been convicted, and we do not name them. - Any number of boys abused. No document gives one. - That bacha bazi is a practice of Afghans, Pashtuns or Muslims as such. The record names the powerful and condemns the practice in Afghan and Islamic terms.

The whole file on one page

What this section shows: seven links, from a newspaper in 2015 to a State Department page dated three days before this update.

One. A newspaper says American soldiers were told to ignore Afghan commanders abusing boys; 93 members of Congress ask for an inquiry. (2015)

Two. Two inspectors general find no written order to look away; the Pentagon's finds soldiers who say they were told nothing could be done. (2017)

Three. Until September 2015 no rule told U.S. personnel to report it, and a Navy training slide described it without judging it. (2005–2015)

Four. The count is seven, then sixteen, on spreadsheets that disagree; the true number "may never be known". (2016–2017)

Five. The Pentagon keeps funding units found to have committed other gross abuses, by a route that did not require telling Congress; the one unit linked to a child assault is funded again only after its men are jailed. (2015–2017)

Six. The former government criminalises bacha bazi in 2017–18 and convicts police officers in 2020–21; then it stops, and then it falls. (2017–2021)

Seven. Under the Taliban, five reports in a row record a ban on paper and no reported prosecution; Afghanistan is on the "policy or pattern" list in the 2024, 2025 and 2026 reports. (2022–2026)

Most of this file is a U.S. government document read in the original. Where a link rests on the State Department's account of what Afghan courts or Taliban officials did, it says so.

What we could not prove

• How many boys. No document gives a number of victims. The U.S. counts are counts of reports on spreadsheets; the UN's are verified cases only. We have not invented a figure.
• What the redactions hide. Whole passages of SIGAR 17-47-IP remain blacked out, including the identity of the unit kept on funding for force-protection reasons and 22 incidents "classified at a level above Secret" (pp. 13, 18). The DoD Inspector General's classified appendix, which describes all sixteen allegations and the U.S. guidance on intervening, has not been released. We have read the public text only.
• What happened to the five cases "under review". Both reports end in 2017 with them open. We found no later U.S. document that closes them.
• The Afghan court records behind the convictions of 2015 and those recorded in the State Department's 2019 and 2021 reports. We know them only from the U.S. reports.
• The New York Times articles of September 2015. We rely on what SIGAR, the congressional letter and the DoD Inspector General quote. We did not read the articles.
• The Taliban's own texts: the December 2024 decree, the January 2026 edict and any public statement that bacha bazi is against Islamic law. We have the State Department's and the UN mission's descriptions, not the documents in Dari or Pashto.
• The 300 arrests and the 20 Nimroz arrests. Recorded by the State Department without details; we cannot check them.
• The UN Secretary-General's 2026 report on children and armed conflict, covering 2025. We did not retrieve it; the latest UN figures used here cover 2024.
• The state.gov pages directly. state.gov refused our generic research client; we read every State Department chapter from the Internet Archive's copies, captured on the dates listed in the sources.
• Whether Congress ever acted on SIGAR's suggestion about the notwithstanding clause before U.S. funding for the Afghan forces ended. We found no public record that it did; our search was not exhaustive.

The verdict

The order was not found. The rule was missing. The count was never known. The prosecutions came late. And under the Taliban, the U.S. government records none at all.

No written order to ignore the abuse of boys was found by either inspector general. What they found is in some ways worse: for more than a decade no U.S. rule told soldiers that child sexual abuse by the forces they trained was something to report, and the first explicit order came on the day the newspaper story ran.

U.S. money did keep flowing to Afghan units found to have committed gross abuses, by a route that did not require telling Congress. The record does not show it flowing to a unit found to have abused a child.

The former Afghan government did prosecute, in 2015 and in the periods covered by the State Department's 2019 and 2021 reports, though rarely its senior men, and, on the State Department's account, no police officer before the 2021 report. For the Taliban, the U.S. government's own finding, five times since 2022, is no reported investigation, prosecution or conviction, a ban on paper, and Taliban members "in some cases" named as perpetrators.

And the claim that this is a culture or a religion is the one the record most clearly rejects. It names the powerful. It records Afghan law, an Afghan president, Afghanistan's human rights commission and the Taliban themselves condemning the practice. In these files, many of the people who exposed it were Afghan.

What would change our mind: a released document showing a written order to ignore abuse; a later U.S. record closing the five open cases; or a State Department report recording a Taliban prosecution for bacha bazi. We have found none, up to 11 October 2026.

Corrections

• 11 October 2026: The earlier version was titled "The Boys Nobody Prosecuted" and called "nobody was prosecuted" "true as the record stands, with one named exception". The record shows more prosecutions under the former government: the State Department's 2019 report records an army perpetrator of bacha bazi sentenced to four months; its 2021 report records seven police officers (one sentenced to death, two to 30 years, four to 24 years) and two army officers (18 months) convicted, and nine people convicted in the Logar schools case; an Afghan official gave SIGAR a list of Interior Ministry officers prosecuted for pederasty (TIP 2019 and 2021, Prosecution; SIGAR p. 23).
• 11 October 2026: The earlier version said the United States had "spent" $71.2 billion building the Afghan forces, in the text and in a figure. SIGAR says more than $71.2 billion was appropriated, as of 31 March 2017 (p. 1 and note 1).
• 11 October 2026: The earlier version cited SIGAR's summary as "p. i" and "p. ii" and its covering letter as "p. vi". Those pages are unnumbered in the report; the summary is at PDF pages 2 to 6 and the letter at PDF page 7.
• 11 October 2026: The earlier version put quotation marks around an Afghan official's words, "senior-level officers have money and power and can easily threaten someone to keep quiet about a crime". SIGAR paraphrases the official there; it does not quote him (p. 21).
• 11 October 2026: The earlier version said, citing SIGAR page 1, that the New York Times had reported that U.S. soldiers who reported abuse "had been punished". SIGAR page 1 says only that the paper named soldiers who reported incidents; the claim that some were disciplined or forced out is the congressional letter's account of the paper (p. 36).
• 11 October 2026: The earlier version, in its text and in a page image, named an Afghan Local Police commander and a district chief of police against whom child sexual abuse was alleged. Neither has been convicted of it; the joint Leahy Forum found no credible information against the second, a decision SIGAR said may have been premature (SIGAR pp. 13, 27). We have removed both names.
• 11 October 2026: A figure in the earlier version was headed "seven children, one conviction". SIGAR's tracker lists seven reported incidents, not seven identified children (two of them concern girls); in the one credible case two soldiers were convicted (p. 13).
• 11 October 2026: A figure in the earlier version said 94 per cent of U.S. troops had gone home "by the time U.S. troops were told in writing to report child sexual assault". The 6,939 figure SIGAR gives is for 17 September 2016, a year after the first order to report child sexual abuse (20 September 2015); SIGAR gives no troop figure for September 2015 (SIGAR p. 20; DODIG p. 25).