The dancing Boys of Afghanistan
We have featured an article about Afghani wedding singers, The pretty Boys of Afghanistan, a while ago. The American TV channel PBS just aired a documentary about a similar topic.: The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan. The video can be either viewed online (if you’re in the US) or downloaded at RapidShare (credit for this goes to the guys over at The Boy Scouts). When you watch this you should consider that this was made for an US audience and is therefore somewhat sensationalist and rather not objective at times. The following text is the official description by PBS.
As the United States deepens its commitment to Afghanistan, Frontline takes viewers inside the war-torn nation to reveal a disturbing practice that is once again flourishing in the country: the organized sexual abuse of adolescent boys. 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."
Under the guise of doing a documentary on similar practices in Europe, Quraishi gained the confidence of Dastager, a former mujahideen commander and wealthy businessman whose business interests include importing autos from the Far East. With Dastager as his guide, Quraishi takes viewers inside the world of bacha bazi, where prominent men compete to own and use the boys.
"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."
"It’s a disgusting practice. … It’s a form of slavery, taking a child, keeping him. It’s a form of sexual slavery," says Radhika Coomaraswamy, U.N. special representative for Children and Armed Conflict. "The only way to stop bacha bazi is if you prosecute the people who commit the crime, and that’s what we need, because the laws are there in the books against this practice."
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."
Quraishi also talks with the family of 15-year-old Hafiz, who reportedly was murdered after trying to escape from his master, a well-known drug baron and warlord. In Hafiz’s case, a suspect — the policeman who supplied the gun that killed Hafiz — was arrested and convicted. Sentenced to 16 years in prison, the officer was released after serving only a few months. Hafiz’s family says they suspect the boy’s former owner bribed local officials to win his release.
"If only these people were punished, this kind of thing wouldn’t happen," Hafiz’s mother says. "Whoever commits these crimes doesn’t get punished. Power is power."
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.
about 2 years ago
PBS is usually better than this, but money has to come from contributions, and the big contributors are companies and foundations. A cold appraisal and presentation of the story would be seen as a tacit acceptance if not a liberal support for such ‘criminal’ behaviour in these polarising times in the US.
How do you tell people that these boys could very well die in battle or starve to death ravaged by disease if their parents did not sell them? Im sure the parents would love to keep them. Their plight is very real. No food and no means to keep their family alive, they choose to sell the boys off. In the past the children were exposed to the elements to die. Poverty, ignorance and misery are everywhere… these are the ‘evils’ we should be fighting, not people or ideologies that cannot be killed. But it is easier to bomb the opposition into the stone age, than to reason with them. It takes more time and will end up most likely dissatisfying to all parties in the end. All I can say is look at the Irish Problem (I have no good word for it at this time, sorry). Many died, many innocents but with very hard efforts and time, it is resolved.
Violence is no solution.
As Isaac Asimov said in his Foundation Trilogy, “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”
about 2 years ago
I agree. People should stop being hypocritical or apply standards of western developed society on undeveloped society of far-east type. Or mixture of both. I agree that those boys would be far worse off had they not been sold. I do not condone this situation, but ,at least, the boys are provided basic needs (nutrition and basic health care), althought they are abused, but I think they would be abused nonetheless and without full stomachs. First situation of afghan people should be better and “bach bazi” would vanish or rapidly diminish at least.
about 2 years ago
First, I would mention that the actual translation of “Bache bazi” is “child play” or “play [with] children.” That these are boys being played with stems at least in part with the restrictions on men’s access to women. It may be easy to say that these boys would suffer even worse fate if they were not sold — but that is not necessarily the case. The families are not just poor that sell their children, but also under great pressure from the powerful families that demand such a sale. The situation is more similar to feudal Europe than to modern commerce, which is to say that many people are dependent upon a few powerful families, not just for money, but for jobs, access to land, gaining access to the legal system, etc. My background on this is that I grew up very close to the Afghan border in Iran, have travelled in Afghanistan, as well as areas in Northern Pakistan and India. Bottom line for me: being sold into a forced situation is no romantic picnic for the boys, no matter how sweet they may be or what activities they might have chosen to be involved in given their own free will.
SJT
about 2 years ago
Stewart,you got it all right, i agree 100% with you,as a fellow who lived in Iran for long time and had afghanis friends.
the soloution to the Afghanistan crisis is economic stability that results from a secure environment where flourish a prosperouss buisness activity.
about 2 years ago
agree completely
about 2 years ago
Afghanistan has many very beautiful boys, and most of them have to work hard as soon as they can walk. Payment of fees to parents or other relatives to get a boy for any kind of work is common practice. Many employers live day and night in their workshops with the whole crew, including the boys, having no contact to women or girls for ages; one can imagine that abuse including sexual abuse is frequent.
Boys in such a situation dream of a better life, and stories of living in rich houses with clean clothes and rich food make the round, and that they have to sing or dance occasionally for the master. They learn songs to become one of the famous wedding singer boys; they grow their hair long to look more handsome; they watch Afghan Star (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2C1c9yp2Ug&feature=player_embedded) for samples.
In that context, the described cases of boys sold to please their masters with more than just singing or dancing happen, but the perception in the Afghan society is rather that these are the lucky ones.
about 2 years ago
One of the problems with the documentary is that it either tried to ignore, or failed to understand (more likely) that the dancing boy tradition is many thousands of years old, and not just in Afghanistan. One of Alexander’s great loves was Bagoas a dancing boy.
I don’t think you can get past the fact that in the current political climate in Afghanistan, sexual abuse and exploitation of dancing boys happens. But the warlord culture exploits everyone, and brutally.
This documentary fails to acknowledge that.
about 2 years ago
Apologies for not being specific (though some will know what I am talking of), but there is a famous book by a old British reporter, who wrote about his work trips and boys throughout the world. In one of his books he clearly describes the exact same practice of dancing boys in Morocco, a fully accepted practice until not that long ago.
Oh yes, and let’s not forget that our society is based on a society that worshiped boys equally if not more. We conveniently forget to mention that we accept nearly all from ancient greece except… the worship of boys. Silly really.
Point is, it is of course absurd that an american, with all his preconceived views (against arabs, talibans and those who enjoy boys), could possibly write any other than totally biased material. What would be really interesting would be how an afghan reporter would write of it.
Not an american-born afghan reporter, a real afghan.
about 2 years ago
this was also shown on british tv http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-dancing-boys-of-afghanistan/4od i thought channel 4 made it cos all the narrative is with a uk accent!
about 2 years ago
It’s unbelievable that anyone here would actually justify this by saying they’re better off somehow.They’re NOT better off.Human beings are not property.These boys are being bought and sold like cattle and are forced to have sex with the men who own them and any other man who they’re rented out to.Some of these boys are beaten and/or killed. Saying that because it’s an old tradition it makes it ok is ridiculous because the same argument could be made for any disgusting tradition.How about human sacrifice?Oppression of women?Persecution of gays?Killing “heretics” or pagans? The age of a tradition doesn’t justify it. Being raped on a full stomach isn’t better than not being raped on an empty stomach either.Most who have suffered sexual abuse would have preferred hunger and poverty without the sexual abuse, than food and wealth with sexual abuse.
about 2 years ago
Waki’s point was not that ‘it’s okay’ because it’s a tradition, but that the sexual abuse is only one single element of abuse in the the “warlord culture”. In other words: there is a much bigger exploitation of the ‘lower class’ going on, not only on levels of sexual abuse.
Stewart worded it with much more experience — I don’t pretend to know anything about Afghan culture: It’s impossible to impose Western standards upon a culture that is so vastly different.
about 2 years ago
you talk of things you know nothing about.
You base your only info on a completely biased article.
It is like those ‘child-savers’ who debark in India, ‘liberate’ all working children, and simply wreck their lives, leaving them and their family all worse off, completely ignorant of the fact that not all kids are exploited, and go back home filled with self-gratification.
When you live and work in india, one quickly understands not all is black and white the way bouregois countries want us to believe.
But for that,one has to actually live and understand the country they talk of, and no rich reporter would do that.
about 2 years ago
Conflating my comments about tradition with the previous arguments about the boys being better off is not very fair. Polynesian cultures have traditions of the dancing boy and it doesn’t necessarily involve sexual abuse. My comment was that the documentary chose to ignore this and argue that dancing boy culture is inherently evil because it must involve pedophilia. I ended up remarking that what is wrong is the war lord culture that allows those with the power of the gun to rape and abuse all of their country. That is disgusting but this documentary doesn’t make that connection.
about 2 years ago
This was also shown on the fantastic channel, More4 in the UK. I’ve not seen it yet but it did look shocking, compelling and interesting.
about 2 years ago
That’s their job.
They are paid to make it look as shocking as possible.
They wouldn’t be paid for another documentary if it wasn’t highly shocking. Their careers depend on it.
We swallow up false truths daily, and dont even know it.
about 2 years ago
I know that. But that’s the idea behind television, people become detached from the world when looking through the lens.
Misinformation through news and media is more common now than it was thirty years ago simply because we don’t need to put the effort into getting stuff right.
Documentaries are supposed to be shocking though; otherwise they’d never be watched.
about 2 years ago
“When you watch this you should consider that this was made for an US audience and is therefore somewhat sensationalist and rather not objective at times.”
I really take issue with this statement. People who watch Frontline don’t watch it for sensational stories. They’ll watch their choice of 24-hour news channels or morning news programs for that sort of schlock. Frontline really has a commitment to factual, in-depth, objective and relevant news reporting in a world (yes, world, not just country) where a lot of people are only looking infotainment (objective doesn’t always mean relevant). You don’t have to take my word for that; any other regular viewers can back me up on that statement.
You can call it American ignorance if you want, but some of you should stop pretending you knew what sort of stuff was going on over there before you read this enlightening post here on milkboys (and really, Josh, many of us owe you thanks for digging up a lot of the LGBT relevant news out there from all over the world). I personally had no idea this sort of thing was happening in that part of the world before I first heard about this program back in February or whenever it was originally supposed to air, and the programme was more educational for me than sensational.
However, I would recognise this was quite a bit below their typical mark of quality objectivity, but the story itself is one that is really hard to digest and remain open-minded about. It wasn’t just a story about “bache bazi”; it was a story *inside* the culture itself with some rather incriminating footage.
One problem with objectivity I had with this story was how personally involved the journalist became in the young boy’s story; he really became a part of the story himself. At the very least, the journalist was able to persuade the military officer to step in and help, but what is being done about all of the other boys? Is that journalist’s actions going to make life more difficult for them and possibly undermine a real political movement to root out the problem?
The other problem I had with the story, and the much bigger one, is that it came to focus too much on the one boy’s story and not about the bigger story. It leads you to believe all dancing boys are sex slaves and the practice is in essence an immoral plague on society. But it doesn’t show a lot to back up that particular assertion. The story could have focussed a little more on the history of the practice, how it has changed and how the bigger problem seems to be with corrupt government officials and military officers.
The story itself? Was it sensational? A bit, but that has nothing to do with an American audience. The fact that boys too young to consent are practically sold into sex *slavery* is just a hard one to swallow, so sensational or not, the story really ought to be told. I don’t know a lot about it apart from what I’ve seen, and yes, there are some major cultural differences, and yes, there might be some boys who are old enough to consent who enjoy dancing and participating in that culture. But obviously there are some big problems that can’t in good conscience be denied.
Slavery? The rape of young boys? The denial of these acts by people who are horrifically homophobic? Please, keep your justifications to yourself.
about 2 years ago
I just got back from Afghanistan after having spent more than a year there working and living alongside their government in the southeast of the country (and most of the time I wasn’t in a US compound).
Three things to bear in mind: first, regardless of whether or not they’re dancing boys, most boys whose families cannot afford to send them to school have them working, and the degree to which they are physically and sexually abused CANNOT be overstated. It’s not overt, but there is next to no recourse for these kids if they are abused by their bosses. Dancing semi-erotically is sensational, sure, but the boy dancing is no less likely to be abused than the boy who chops firewood, washes dishes, herds animals, hauls trash or buys groceries. Afghanistan’s poverty is indescribable, and many of these boys are trapped because they have to provide for their families, consequences be damned. So, baccha bazi aside, boys are heavily victimized by virtue of being forced to work in all male environments in which most men are desperate for sex because there are no women and premarital heterosexual sex will literally get you killed in a heartbeat.
Second, Afghan (and, particularly, Pashtun) culture is so incredibly misogynistic that it can give undue impressions to Westerners. You see a video of a boy dancing for men and it might strike you as prurient, but every party I ever went to had only men. The only people dancing were men, and the only people attending were, too. You never see women except by total accident in Pashtun Afghanistan (unless they are like 75+ years old, in which case they don’t care if men see them). I imagine if there was a culture of girls as young as eleven dancing for men (like southeast Asia, for example) it wouldn’t be so shocking to our eyes as this, but in rural Afghanistan there is no mingling of the sexes. At all. So, men dance with men all the time (doing the attaan for example).
Third, there is a heavy degree of what you might call “down low” homosexuality in Afghanistan, but it can’t be looked at through the paradigm of liberated sexuality in the West. It’s very often exploitative, and while it’s blatant in the sense that some men brag about their sexual conquests of other men, the moment that someone called themselves “gay” in the Western sense, they’d be ostracized and probably killed. If you don’t believe me, go to southern Afghanistan and say “rikhtya ze kuni yem” and see what happens. Homosexuality in Afghanistan isn’t akin to some kind of naturalistic primitive communism of genders. It’s very often exploitative and forced, in the sense that this is a country ruled by warlords and their drugged up gangs of adolescents who take what they want (as long as it’s not a girl — that would be intolerable to social mores).
I heard a lot about the unique tolerance for homosexuality and man/adolescent relationships (sort of an indigenous tolerance like kathoey or the various insemination rites in Oceania) before I went to Afghanistan, but honestly what I saw was just a lot of very sad exploitation by the powerful or moneyed upon the desperately poor people.
about 2 years ago
Thank you so much for this insight into the culture and period in Afghani life. It is very difficult for people in the West to conceive of what their culture is let alone the stresses and problems they face day to day.
This was eye opening and simply fascinating.
about 2 years ago
While the news piece was shown on Frontline it is clearly a piece of British journalism.
As several people here have pointed out, you have no basis for judging the culture unless you’re lived there. Trying to judge Afghan culture by western standards is somewhat similar to judging western culture by Afghan standards.
And just for reference, as I type this, there’s a boy with his bare butt in the air at the bottom of the screen and I don’t think he intends for it to be used as a vase.
about 1 year ago
Very nice post. Do you accept guest writers?
about 1 year ago
i had read something about this before in some magazine and reading people’s comments on it makes it way bigger than i thought….im about to watch this right now….
Dani
about 1 year ago
just saw it….and i cant help but cry……… :-/ the saddest part is, that stuff like that goes on in this country too……….. :-(
about 1 year ago
The entertainment dancing boys provide is not the issue. Billy Elliot has dancing boys. Rape is the issue and even in Afghan society gay sex is punishable by death in some areas. Unless of course you have the money and thus the power. Supporting boy sexuality is important but it must be on the boys terms and not those of a master. I’m reading a lot here that sounds like it’s coming from the NAMBLA handbook. This documentary centers on boys being forced into sex with trolls. The key word here is FORCED. Human rights have come a long way except for the commentors here who dream of having their own dancing boy to abuse at will and chain up next to their bed. These commentors disrespect gay youth everywhere. This is a sad story and many of the comments here supporting the abusers are disgusting.