When George w. Bush sent the Taliban packing in 2011 it was once again open season on little Afghan boys' bums. A lot of Afghan guys, you see, like to diddle boys. Warlords are known to be particularly fond of delicate boy bums.
Oh, but just don't get caught. Afghanistan does have laws against prederasty but it likes to punish victim and predator alike - except that the predator is far more likely to have a bit of loose change to buy his way out of jail.
So there's this 13-year old boy, you see, and there are these two grown men who had a go at him. So the kid was convicted and got a year in juvi. The adults? No one's really sure just what happened to them.
Here's a little Bachi Bazi, said by some to be Afghanistan's favourite dance. A bunch of men get together and then a young, hairless boy dressed in women's clothes and jewelry gives them all an entertaining dance. You can figure out the rest.
The Talibs, by the way, crushed the practice during their stay.
You must've heard of the movie "The Dancing Boys of Kabul"?
ReplyDeleteOld men with female child "brides." Warlords with pubescent dancing boys.
And our great leaders CHOSE to join this abomination and then stay year after year for over a decade.
And yet, it's the war's critics who have to prove they should be taken seriously.
I had no idea this happened. Those poor kids, virtual sex slaves.
ReplyDeleteThe answer is not in the terror, brutality, and slavery to religious ideology that is the Taliban, but in pursuit of a just society that values every person and is built on a foundation of reason rather than of superstition.
It was only a matter of months after the Taliban were routed that the New York Times reported that warlords were back to their old ways, scooping up little boys in public markets. Parents were hiding their children lest they be seized.
ReplyDeleteYes, I'm familiar with that movie. I blame Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld & Co. for knocking Afghanistan over and then abandoning the place so they could turn their attention on Iraq. The place and the people never had a chance.
@ Elliott. Due to a decade of incompetent western political and military leadership any hope of establishing a just society in Afghanistan is lost.
ReplyDeleteSeveral years back a Senate Foreign Relations expert testified to a simple fact - there has never been a stable Muslim state that did not first overcome the dual scourges of tribalism and warlordism.
Afghanistan is rent with tribalism - Pashtun, Hazara, Tajik, Uzbek, Baloch, Turkmen and others. And we perpetuated their warlordism when we allowed truly brutal war criminals into the post-Taliban power structure - guys like Dostum.
We all but ensured that Afghanistan would become the failed state that Chatham House early on labelled a "criminal enterprise."
Our sorry chapter in the history of Afghanistan is coming to an end. It could be China's turn next.