The Boys We Left Behind: The Heartbreaking Truth of Bacha Bazi in Afghanistan, and America’s Missed Opportunity

Every morning in Kabul, a 14-year-old boy named Abdul waved from behind a bakery window. Then one day he was gone — taken by a government official, the kind the United States was funding to fight its war. What happened to Abdul has a name: bacha bazi, or "boy play." It is centuries old, it is systematic, and for two decades while America had a hundred thousand troops on the ground, it was largely ignored. Boys between the ages of 10 and 18, taken from the poorest families, dressed, danc...