Powerful Afghan Men & Their Dancing Boys
Written by Jay Harper on April 22nd, 2010Back when I was in college I did my honors thesis on homosexuality in the Middle East. After a fair amount of research I found there are homosexual traditions in the Middle East that are accepted despite the fact that homosexuality is punishable by death under Islamic law. Modern, Western gay relationships are out, but what you find are one of two things - 1) cross dressing, and 2) pedophilia. Think of Middle Eastern cross dressers as pre-op transexuals who live their lives as women. Despite the segregation of men and women, the cross-dressed men are allowed to spend private time with women outside their family (which is unheard of). The pedophilia was well structured and took the form of young “apprentices” to older “masters”. The older men didn’t consider themselves gay because they would have wives and families. The boy was just something on the side.
The other night Frontline had a program the other day on “The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan”. Afghanistan has a tradition that’s called “bacha bazi” (بچه بازی) which literally translates to “baby play”. Poor young boys are recruited by an older wealthy men, their families paid pretty well for the boys, and they’re “trained” to entertain men. Not stated in the documentary, but pretty clear from watching which boys are recruited, is the fact that they’re trying to find and recruit kids who are probably gay. It probably also explains why the families are willing to sell the boys - I doubt they’d sell their butch, rugged son, but it’s not such a big deal to sell the kids who they suspect to be gay.
The entertainment consists of dressing them as women and having them dance for a group of men. Curiously, the dancing part is quite modest - like women dancers, hardly any skin shows.
The issue is that after the performance their “master” (owner) may lend the boy to another man for the evening and sex is expected. From a western perspective this is literally sexual slavery of minors. The other big problem is that while some of the boys manage to fit in (the femmy gay ones), ones who resist and cause problems are often killed.
What’s interesting is that it’s all practiced pretty openly. Frontline even showed one case where bacha bazi was the entertainment for men attending a wedding. And most of the men who involved are powerful, with standing in the community - military commanders, police chiefs, businessmen, etc.
When I was in college studying sociology and Middle Eastern studies one of the big challenges was to try to look at cultures from their own eyes - cultural relativism. The Afghans who are outraged about bacha bazi are typically western educated, English speakers, or strict Muslims (the Taliban banned bacha bazi). I think part of their outrage comes from that fact that rich, powerful “straight” men with families might actually be gay or bisexual. Yes, there are serious exploitation issues with bacha bazi, but I think homophobia is a big part of the opposition to it. If the boys were older and things were more consensual (like western drag queen) many of the opponents would probably still be opposed to it.
However, the traditional Afghan seems to pretty much accept bacha bazi, and in a culture that isn’t all that fond of educating women and makes women wear burqas, it’s really not that surprising. Human life just isn’t intrinsically valued in Afghanistan like it is in the west. All men are not created equal. In Afghanistan if you’re male and wealthy you get to do pretty much what you want. And if you’re poor or female your life will be dictated by others with more power. Women literally can’t show their faces in public and some poor boys are required to have sex with older wealthy men.
So ultimately this is less about a sex crime and more about principles of basic equality. You can pass all the laws you want outlawing bacha bazi (as the Taiban did), but it will have little effect if you don’t instill in people that everyone is inherently equal and that there are certain human right everyone just gets without earning them.
If you’re sitting there thinking the Afghans are so horrible for accepting bacha bazi, think again. Many in the “Tea Party” movement seem to have big problems with the fact that the country is being led by a black man and say pretty horrible things about him based solely on his skin color. Others spend millions of dollars fighting civil rights for gay people. Others don’t like to ride in airplanes with Muslims. Then there are the thousands of hate crimes that are reported every year with some people getting killed simply because of the color of their skin, or their religion or their sexual orientation. We’re really not in a position to throw stones at the Afghans.
14
PM
An interesting point of view but a few comments.
1) Afghanistan is not in the Middle East - it’s a personal pet peeve that the West constantly says it is part of the middle east.
2) You make quite a few generalizations though I agree with a great deal of what you said. For example, not all women are forced to be completely covered in public. Without a doubt there are massive injustices in the country, and I still think being an afghan women (in certain families) is a horrible fate. However the country and all of its tribes are much more complicated than what you’ve described. There was a time when Kabul was extremely liberal, women wore skirts and men and women bathed in the outdoor poor at the Intercontinental Hotel.
I do applaud your comments about American. It has its share of racist and ignorant people.
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PM
@Susan - Afghanistan is in the Middle East. The only other term I’ve heard for the area is the Near East. It is true that like Iran, they’re not Arabs, but that doesn’t mean they’re not Middle Eastern. If that’s not the case, then why does every university have Iranian and Afghan studies assigned to their Department of Middle Eastern Studies?
Afghanistan is grouped with the Middle East for a pretty simple reason - language and culture. Iran is Middle Eastern, and Pashto is a very close linguistic sibling of Persian. Now, Iran is considered Middle Eastern because of geography (on the Gulf) and because they were ruled for a time by Arabs (who changed their written language to use Arabic script).
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PM
Perhaps the CIA world fact book will help to clarify, regardless of where universities put it:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/af.html
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/graphics/ref_maps/pdf/asia.pdf
The United Nations as well does not place it in the Middle East: http://arabstates.undp.org/
It’s in Asia: http://www.undp.org/asia/
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AM
@Susan - The UN isn’t defining the term “Middle East”. They’ve gone with “Arab States” and then included Iran and Afghanistan in Asia. That’s a completely different and valid classification system.
If you’re a geologist, yes, Afghanistan is part of Asia, but culturally it’s very connected to Iran which is part of the Middle East. Wikipedia mentions that the term Middle East sometimes includes Afghanistan and even Pakistan (I think including Pakistan is reaching).
I did make one mistake in what I said above. It’s not Pashto that is similar to Persian - it’s Dari, their other official language.
As far as US government sources (like the CIA) - one of US’s strategic mistakes in the past was that they saw Afghanistan as part of Asia and so they’d rotate Asian specialist diplomats into the country who never learned the language. The Brits and others saw it as connected to Iran so they’d bounce diplomats between Iran and Afghanistan and they got to know the language (since Dari is similar to Persian) and since they knew the language they had better contacts and better information on what was going on in the country.
That is a good example of how seeing Afghanistan as Asian is a problem. It’s tied to Iran - so however you classify Iran is how you should classify Afghanistan. Unless you’re a geologist - in which case it’s part of Asia, but as soon as people are in the equation it gets more complicated…
7
AM
I would like to mention that it is wrong to say the Taliban “Banned” the Bachi Bazi. I’m sure for most of the tribal chiefs, elders, warlords, and other powerful figures had it taken away from them under threat of murder. However, the taliban was well known for snatching boys for their own use.
Some of the older kids can tell you a time when Taliban trucks would drive through their neighborhoods and they would have to go running, otherwise risk getting snatched by a a group of them for sexual favors. This was also documented by many journalists as well.
The taliban were an outside political force, unlike the tribal/warlord power structure that draws from the local communities. Largely comprised of students from the madrasas in Pakistan as a result of the afghan refugees and millions of fatherless children. Who knows what types of sexual exploitation went on in these madrasas but it’s easy to see how the Taliban students would grow older with a completely warped view of sexuality completely separated from females. I’ve also heard reports in both the 1980s Russian occupation and post 2001 US occupation that rebel fighters often recruit young boys from madrasas ostensibly for jihad only to have them serve sexual favors for commanders and tribal leaders.
Kuni Bachi Baz is a well known epithet for young kids and this is something that permeates Afghan culture, regardless of how “Islamic” one is. For a society that shuns visual images of females it is not surprising.
To Susan, virtually all females except for children and elderly are covered. Only a few times will you see uncovered females. Possibly in Kabul, or separated areas such as universities. It is very rare to see uncovered females in the streets and outside of a few cities (where it is still rare) it is virtually impossible for a woman to be uncovered.