Afghanistan: PBS on child sex rings


Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Islam’s Nancy Boys Redux

by Baron Bodissey C/O Gates of Vienna

I wrote several years ago about the widespread practice of pederasty among Muslims, especially in South Asia. The custom in which older men groom young boys for sex and keep them as catamites has been practiced for centuries in Afghanistan and parts of Iran and Pakistan. It is not for nothing that Kandahar is known as “the homosexual capital of South Asia”.

Like many other “macho” cultures, most Islamic societies do not view men who have sex with young boys as homosexuals, provided that the practitioner acts as the active partner in the encounter. The seclusion of women and the practice of polygamy limit the access of young men to normal heterosexual outlets for their urges, so Islamic societies, particularly in the less developed areas, have come to resemble prison culture with their sexual predators and “nancy boys”.

Our regular tipster JD sent us an email about a PBS program on this topic that aired last night:

A disturbing episode of the documentary show Frontline was on TV last night (9pm 20 April 2010) entitled “The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan”.

“In the midst of war and endemic poverty, an ancient tradition has re-emerged across Afghanistan: Hundreds of boys are being lured off the streets with promises of a new life, many unaware their fate is to be used for entertainment and sex.”

The show may be watched online here.

Below are some excerpts from PBS’ synopsis of the program:

In The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan, Afghan journalist Najibullah Quraishi (Behind Taliban Lines) returns to his native land to expose an ancient practice that has been brought back by powerful warlords, former military commanders and wealthy businessmen. Known as “bacha bazi” (literal translation: “boy play”), this illegal practice exploits street orphans and poor boys, some as young as 11, whose parents are paid to give over their sons to their new “masters.” The men dress the boys in women’s clothes and train them to sing and dance for the entertainment of themselves and their friends. According to experts, the dancing boys are used sexually by these powerful men.

In detailed conversations with several bacha bazi masters in northern Afghanistan and with the dancing boys they own, reporter Quraishi reveals a culture where wealthy Afghan men openly exploit some of the poorest, most vulnerable members of their society.

“What was so unnerving about the men I had met was not just their lack of concern for the damage their abuse was doing to the boys,” Quraishi says. “It was also their casualness with which they operated and the pride with which they showed me their boys, their friends, their world. They clearly believed that nothing they were doing was wrong.”

– – – – – – – – –

[…]

“I had a boy because every commander had a partner,” says Mestary, a former senior commander who is well connected with major Afghan warlords. “Among the commanders there is competition, and if I didn’t have one, then I could not compete with them.”

“I go to every province to have happiness and pleasure with boys,” says an Afghan man known as “The German,” who acts as a bacha bazi pimp, supplying boys to the men. “Some boys are not good for dancing, and they will be used for other purposes…. I mean for sodomy and other sexual activities.”

[…]

In the documentary, Quraishi interviews local police officials who insist that men who participate in bacha bazi will be arrested and punished regardless of their wealth or powerful connections. Later that day, however, Quraishi’s cameras catch two officers from the same police department attending an illegal bacha bazi party.

“Many of the people who do this work for the government,” says Nazer Alimi, who compiled a report on bacha bazi for UNICEF. “They speak out against it but are abusers themselves…. I personally cannot mention any names because I am scared.”

Quraishi speaks with some dancing boys who fear they will be beaten or killed. “If they stray, they get killed,” says a 13-year-old dancing boy. “Sometimes fighting happens among the men who own the boys. If you don’t please them, they beat you, and people get killed.”

[…]

The program will conclude with a detailed update of attempts to arrange the rescue of one of the dancing boys profiled in the film, an 11-year-old boy bought by Dastager from an impoverished rural family. It is a dramatic final chapter, full of new shocks and surprises, and, in the end, provides a measure of justice for the boy and his master.

[…]

“I had a boy because every commander had a partner,” says Mestary, a former senior commander who is well connected with major Afghan warlords. “Among the commanders there is competition, and if I didn’t have one, then I could not compete with them.”

“I go to every province to have happiness and pleasure with boys,” says an Afghan man known as “The German,” who acts as a bacha bazi pimp, supplying boys to the men. “Some boys are not good for dancing, and they will be used for other purposes…. I mean for sodomy and other sexual activities.”

[…]

In the documentary, Quraishi interviews local police officials who insist that men who participate in bacha bazi will be arrested and punished regardless of their wealth or powerful connections. Later that day, however, Quraishi’s cameras catch two officers from the same police department attending an illegal bacha bazi party.

“Many of the people who do this work for the government,” says Nazer Alimi, who compiled a report on bacha bazi for UNICEF. “They speak out against it but are abusers themselves…. I personally cannot mention any names because I am scared.”

Quraishi speaks with some dancing boys who fear they will be beaten or killed. “If they stray, they get killed,” says a 13-year-old dancing boy. “Sometimes fighting happens among the men who own the boys. If you don’t please them, they beat you, and people get killed.”

[…]

The program will conclude with a detailed update of attempts to arrange the rescue of one of the dancing boys profiled in the film, an 11-year-old boy bought by Dastager from an impoverished rural family. It is a dramatic final chapter, full of new shocks and surprises, and, in the end, provides a measure of justice for the boy and his master.

Phyllis Chesler writes on this program here:

an excerpt:

“Look: Wherever women are forced to wear chadors, burqas, niqab, be sure: That in addition to woman-abuse and woman-hatred, that children are also being abused. For men, especially warriors, who are brought up apart from women, taught to fear and despise women, their major erotic and social drives will be male-centric, not female-centric. Homosexual pederasty accompanies extreme gender apartheid in an extreme way.”

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

8 Replies to “Afghanistan: PBS on child sex rings”

  1. I read that over 85% of Khomeni’s Friday sermons in Tehran dealt with nothing but homosexuality, pedastery, and anal sex. The man, his followers, and their religion are rancid.

    Hyderabad, India is the extreme opposite of this story. The muslims go there for vacation to marry <12 yr old girls and then divorce them after a couple of days.

  2. JL, were Khomeini’s sermons for or against the practises? I know he was big on 3 year old girls.

  3. He was against it – if you were the boy/male on the receiving end. But the male who was raping was not to be considered queer. Like every 14th century practicing muslim, he was an exploitationistic hypocrite. There was an Iranian site that used to translate them. I don’t know if it still exists?

  4. bacha bazi or ashna bazi is not some aberrant criminal and non-consensual practice like child abuse. Often these relationships develop into lifelong bonds and comradeship. Ancient traditions are often misunderstood and condemned by US and UN backed psychobabble, How can a people (like you Americans) who only understand war, fast food and material greed as culture ever understand anything sexual that is more complex than penthouse and playboy!! Leave Asia alone you perverted warmongers. NATO, UNICEF and some random loser journalists have no business telling Afghans how to lead their lives… Isn’t it enough that you have sent death to them with missiles, drones, guns and tanks since the last decade! First the UK tried to colonize them, then anti religion USSR screwed them now the anti culture USA wants to impose their shallow standardized morality on the poor beleaguered Afghans!!! For gods sake leave Asia alone you Yankee buffoons! And don’t give me that old cop out of the native returning to his home to help end ‘oppression’ , this idiot and his ilk are nothing more than Americanized yuppies who have been taught to look down and feel ashamed of their own society and heritage. You dirty fatalists don’t mind shooting, bombing or maiming a 13 yr old, you would happily let them strip down to their undies for a paid commercial or join the fffng marines from high school, you’d let poor ‘third world’ kids work in sweatshops for Nike…. But sex ! oh no… no way! better to die than express ones sexuality before the arbitrary magic age of 18.. right!? Hope you and your fascist consumer culture crumbles onto itself and (like Russia) you become so busy with pimping out your own 13 year old’s to anyone with a buck or two, that you stop writing trashy, self righteous neo-Christian garbage like this! Amen

  5. Thank you for that long expected leftist sanctimonious diatribe defending child sex slavery. Of course, everything you wrote was wholly bereft of content but lets not let that get in the way of a sanctimonious rant. When one person is forced to have sex its rape. Children, cannot give consent to sex. They simply are not able and often, when allowed to express an opinion, they do not wish it. Forced marriage is not marriage even if there is a ceremony to make it all halal. As for the rest you wrote, anyone can look up the facts as to the US rules of engagement in Afghanistan and Iraq for that matter, which favour the enemy as a matter of fact. The US goes to huge lengths to not kill or involve civilians. As to the rest, freedom means people make choices other people do not like. You do not like the choices Americans make in food and entertainment. But that is the cost of freedom. Many people do choose the high road in the west and that is why all the best artists and technology and everything else either is created there, or there creators move there, to have the freedom to create, and to enjoy the fruits of their labour however they chose. Freedom is anathema to leftists so you have to reduce it all to terms that make you appear morally superior. What have you ever done for anyone else except try to get them to share your hatred of capitalism or desire to destroy the only few democratic and free nations on earth?
    I bet you support Greenpeace’s stopping Zambia from accepting GMO foods as gifts without ever actually starving yourself or losing a family member to starvation. Because hatred and sanctimony is all you know.