Sunday, August 29, 2010 (SF Chronicle)
Afghanistan's dirty little secret
Joel Brinkley
Western forces fighting in southern Afghanistan had a problem. Too often,
soldiers on patrol passed an older man walking hand-in-hand with a pretty
young boy. Their behavior suggested he was not the boy's father. Then,
British soldiers found that young Afghan men were actually trying to
"touch and fondle them," military investigator AnnaMaria Cardinalli told
me. "The soldiers didn't understand."
All of this was so disconcerting that the Defense Department hired
Cardinalli, a social scientist, to examine this mystery. Her report,
"Pashtun Sexuality," startled not even one Afghan. But Western forces were
shocked - and repulsed.
For centuries, Afghan men have taken boys, roughly 9 to 15 years old, as
lovers. Some research suggests that half the Pashtun tribal members in
Kandahar and other southern towns are bacha baz, the term for an older man
with a boy lover. Literally it means "boy player." The men like to boast
about it.
"Having a boy has become a custom for us," Enayatullah, a 42-year-old in
Baghlan province, told a Reuters reporter. "Whoever wants to show off
should have a boy."
Baghlan province is in the northeast, but Afghans say pedophilia is most
prevalent among Pashtun men in the south. The Pashtun are Afghanistan's
most important tribe. For centuries, the nation's leaders have been
Pashtun.
President Hamid Karzai is Pashtun, from a village near Kandahar, and he
has six brothers. So the natural question arises: Has anyone in the Karzai
family been bacha baz? Two Afghans with close connections to the Karzai
family told me they know that at least one family member and perhaps two
were bacha baz. Afraid of retribution, both declined to be identified and
would not be more specific for publication.
As for Karzai, an American who worked in and around his palace in an
official capacity for many months told me that homosexual behavior "was
rampant" among "soldiers and guys on the security detail. They talked
about boys all the time."
He added, "I didn't see Karzai with anyone. He was in his palace most of
the time." He, too, declined to be identified.
In Kandahar, population about 500,000, and other towns, dance parties are
a popular, often weekly, pastime. Young boys dress up as girls, wearing
makeup and bells on their feet, and dance for a dozen or more leering
middle-aged men who throw money at them and then take them home. A recent
State Department report called "dancing boys" a "widespread, culturally
sanctioned form of male rape."
So, why are American and NATO forces fighting and dying to defend tens of
thousands of proud pedophiles, certainly more per capita than any other
place on Earth? And how did Afghanistan become the pedophilia capital of
Asia?
Sociologists and anthropologists say the problem results from perverse
interpretation of Islamic law. Women are simply unapproachable. Afghan men
cannot talk to an unrelated woman until after proposing marriage. Before
then, they can't even look at a woman, except perhaps her feet. Otherwise
she is covered, head to ankle.
"How can you fall in love if you can't see her face," 29-year-old Mohammed
Daud told reporters. "We can see the boys, so we can tell which are
beautiful."
Even after marriage, many men keep their boys, suggesting a loveless life
at home. A favored Afghan expression goes: "Women are for children, boys
are for pleasure." Fundamentalist imams, exaggerating a biblical passage
on menstruation, teach that women are "unclean" and therefore distasteful.
One married man even asked Cardinalli's team "how his wife could become
pregnant," her report said. When that was explained, he "reacted with
disgust" and asked, "How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God
has made unclean?"
That helps explain why women are hidden away - and stoned to death if they
are perceived to have misbehaved. Islamic law also forbids homosexuality.
But the pedophiles explain that away. It's not homosexuality, they aver,
because they aren't in love with their boys.
Addressing the loathsome mistreatment of Afghan women remains a primary
goal for coalition governments, as it should be.
But what about the boys, thousands upon thousands of little boys who are
victims of serial rape over many years, destroying their lives - and
Afghan society.
"There's no issue more horrifying and more deserving of our attention than
this," Cardinalli said. "I'm continually haunted by what I saw."
As one boy, in tow of a man he called "my lord," told the Reuters
reporter: "Once I grow up, I will be an owner, and I will have my own
boys."
© 2010 Joel Brinkley
Joel Brinkley is a professor of journalism at Stanford University and is a
former Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for the New York
Times. Contact The Chronicle via our online form:
sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1.
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Copyright 2010 SF Chronicle
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