Stopping sexual assaults - Air Force Community - Air Force Times

Stopping sexual assaults

Lights now shine outside the B-huts at Bagram Airfield, an effort by the Air Force to prevent more sexual assaults at its biggest base in Afghanistan.

Airmen and soldiers placed 150 solar-powered lights in the housing areas.

Last year, the number of sexual assaults at Bagram hit 53 — 45 soldiers and eight airmen. In 2008, across all of Afghanistan, 22 soldiers and four airmen reported sexual assaults.

That’s an increase of more than 100 percent, at a time when the base population has held steady at about 25,000.

Sadly, sexual assaults in the war zone are nothing new. And their number will likely increase with the buildup of 30,000 additional troops in Afghanistan in the coming months.

Why, though, did it take the military so long to do something so simple to defend its own people from sexual predators in their midst?

At the start of the war, officials had good reason to keep the housing areas dark. It was necessary for force protection. But eight years later, the base is less threatened from outside the wire. And troops stationed there shouldn’t face a bigger threat from inside.

Lights are a key step. A rigorous investigation and aggressive police work are no less essential. If this were happening outside the wire, military leaders and lawmakers would be outraged. They must be just as outraged — and perhaps more so — that it could happen inside the wire, where our troops are supposed to be safe.