DEHRAZI, Afghanistan — The 9-year-old boy with pale skin and big, piercing eyes captivated Mirzahan at first sight.

“He is more handsome than anyone in the village,” the 22-year-old farmer said, explaining why he is grooming the boy as a sexual partner and companion. There was another important factor that made Waheed easy to take on as a bacha bazi, or a boy for pleasure: “He doesn’t have a father, so there is no one to stop this.”

A growing number of Afghan children are being coerced into a life of sexual abuse. The practice of wealthy or prominent Afghans exploiting underage boys as sexual partners who are often dressed up as women to dance at gatherings is on the rise in post-Taliban Afghanistan, according to Afghan human rights researchers, Western officials and men who participate in the abuse.

“Like it or not, there was better rule of law under the Taliban,” said Dee Brillenburg Wurth, a child-protection expert at the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, who has sought to persuade the government to address the problem. “They saw it as a sin, and they stopped a lot of it.”

Over the past decade, the phenomenon has flourished in Pashtun areas in the south, in several northern provinces and even in the capital, according to Afghans who engage in the practice or have studied it. Although issues such as women’s rights and moral crimes have attracted a flood of donor aid and activism in recent years, bacha bazi remains poorly understood.

… “It is very sensitive and taboo in Afghanistan,” said Hayatullah Jawad, head of the Afghan Human Rights Research and Advocacy Organization, who is based in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif. “There are a lot of people involved in this case, but no one wants to talk about it.”

… Although the practice of bacha bazi has become something of an open secret in Afghanistan, it is seldom discussed in public or with outsiders.

Sitting next to the 9-year-old Waheed, who was wearing a pink pants-and-tunic set called a shalwar kameez, Mirzahan said he opted to take on the boy because marrying a woman would have been prohibitively expensive. The two have not had sex, Mirzahan said, but that will happen in a few years. For now, Waheed is being introduced to slightly older “danc­ing boys.”

“He is not dancing yet, but he is willing,” Mirzahan said with pride.

… Boys who become bachas are seen as property, said Jawad, the human rights researcher. Those who are perceived as being particularly beautiful can be sold for tens of thousands of dollars. The men who control them sometimes rent them out as dancers at male-only parties, and some are prostituted.

“This is abuse,” Jawad said. “Most of these children are not willing to do this. They do this for money. Their families are very poor.”

… When the boys age beyond their prime and get tossed aside, many become pimps or prostitutes, said Afghan photojournalist Barat Ali Batoor, who spent months chronicling the plight of dancing boys. Some turn to drugs or alcohol, he said.

“In Afghan society, if you are raped or you are abused, you will not have space in society to live proudly,” he said.

Read the full article by clicking here.

View a related photo gallery by clicking here.

Think that Islam is just another religion?  Think again.  Constantine counts the ways that Islam is a threat to peace on Earth – Burkasrugly

Just since 9/11 there have been 18,699 jihadist attacks where one or more people have been killed. That amounts to about 1,700 violent incidents per year or an average of almost 5 per day. This figure of 18,699 does not include attacks where people are horribly wounded but no fatalities occur. It has been estimated conservatively that more than 270 million deaths have been caused by the action of militant Islamists since the time of Mohammed. India alone has suffered 80 million killed by the jihadis. Indeed Mohammed was the very first Islamic terrorist. The ultra violence in Islam has its roots in the life and actions of Mohammed. According to the Reliance of the Traveller there is the boast that Mohammed led 27 military raids and ordered another 47. (Section O 9)

If you take the total number killed during World War II there is a consensus figure of 40 million dead. So Mohammed and his perverted death cult have been eightfold more successful at killing people than Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini combined. For much of the 1400 year history of jihad these people were killed without the modern efficiency of firearms. The jihadis for the most part used swords and spears. Soon they have may nuclear weapons to kill millions in a matter of minutes.

Of course, these figures don’t include those who are wounded and are permanently disabled. There are women who have been raped, who have had acid thrown in their faces, who have had noses and ears cut off, and burned beyond recognition. Then there are the famous Dancing Boys who are eight and nine-year-olds who have been anally penetrated by Islamic sexual perverts. Think of all the amputations of feet and hands. Nor does it include the great numbers of captured (Koran sanctioned) people who live as slaves of Muslims. (Don’t believe me ! Just google Black Slaves Sudan). Nor does this include American and European children kidnaped by their Muslim fathers and hustled off to Saudi Arabia never to be heard of again. All of these are hellish experiences for the maimed living.

Islam is a totalitarian system masquerading as a religion. It is a political ideology all about the denial of the most basic human rights. The West is in a struggle for its very life. We must identify our common enemy and begin the roll back.

Winston Churchill in the 1930′s wrote, “If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be an even worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”

Time is running out. What will you do in this epic struggle ? Hopefully your answer is not to go to the mall. Take a stand and help us destroy this brutal tyrannical movement by shining on it the brilliant light of the Truth.

In hoc signo vinces,

Constantine

P.S. Can you name just 5 Christian terror attacks since 9/11 ?

I asked who had seen some dancing boys, either completely nekkid or with the naught bits covered. I was actually kind of surprised how many hadn’t, or how many hadn’t seen them completely in the buff. My first experience with male stripper was when I was 19. It was a friend’s Mom’s 50th birthday party. Yes, awkward. Anyway, this was way back in the day, ‘cause I’m old as dirt, and in Manitoba no less, and they were completely bare. Huh. Who’d have thought we were so progressive out there on the prairies.

What did people have to say about the dancing boys:

Ok while I can appreciate the skin I just can’t get past the boys that can’t shake their booty – so I would rather watch boys that can dance rather than uncoordinated attempts. – Riley (point taken, have some rhythm white boys)

Some drool worthy in my college days. One gent who was apache had me really drooling. And those guys in NOLA. – SamK (Okay, Andrew in NOLA was pitiful but the others were ‘fine’)

Only once in the total buff, and he wasn’t that good-looking, which sort of spoiled the experience. I’ve seen lots of strippers or go-go dancers in g-strings/jock straps… – Janet (Why was Janet looking above his shoulders?)

I’ve seen both. I sort of prefer them to be not entirely naked. I’m way more about the arms and chest than the peen. – Anon (that’s a point – we all know penises are gross)

Okay, so maybe you’d seen one up there gyrating on the bar and having a good time. Maybe you’ve even touched a bare ass or two in passing. What about something more. Really getting down and dirty. Well, not surprisingly the numbers there are much lower. I’m thinking largely because that may be illegal in most places? Not sure. Anyway, most of us are willing to give it a try though and see if it’s worthwhile. The ladies in the circles I run in are nothing if not open minded.

So what was it like for those who’ve experienced it?

Once, in passing, in Thailand, and it made me really sad – Anon (that doesn’t sound fun)

Maybe, oh hell yeah, let me at it? Have watched the men down on Bourbon Street with a gay co-worker. – SamK (How did I miss this in NOLA?)

At a gay club we hadn’t visited before – it was actually pretty good – needless to say we did go back again! But have also seen some pretty bad ones – Riley (Riley, the voice of experience.)

Only if no women are involved. – Ruby Netherlips (True that. I heard some oddly horrific/yet fascinating stories about Japan from a colleague)

Does the Folsom Street Fair count? There were all sorts of lovely men doing lovely things to each other, and I have photos to prove it – Anon (I can’t believe she didn’t share the pics!)

Only reason I haven’t is I’d rather go in the company of a friend, and the opportunity hasn’t come around yet. But on that fine day…! – Willa Okati (author) (We’ll have to work on that Willa.)

A club isn’t my thing. Certainly wouldn’t mind seeing two guys having sex live, though, but outside of a club, not sure how that would come about, lol. – Anon (I believe cash would exchange hands. Maybe if we all chipped in?)

So there you have it. Monday on my blog I’ll have some final thought on WHY we like the all-boy porn. I was so impressed by everyone who answered by poll and shared their personal stories and reasons for their preferences. Not all anon as you note either.

Thanks to C&R for hosting some of my results and for inspiring the survey. It was great fun.

Check out Tam’s blog: Tam Reads, Writes & Rambles, read her reviews at Brief Encounters, or follow her on Twitter.

By ROD NORDLAND, ALISSA J. RUBIN and MATTHEW ROSENBERG

“President Karzai has the toughest job in the world”

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Americans in Afghanistan are “demons.”

They claim they burned Korans by mistake, but really those were “Satanic acts that will never be forgiven by apologies.”

The massacre of 16 Afghan children, women and men by an American soldier “was not the first incident, indeed it was the 100th, the 200th and 500th incident.”

Such harsh talk may sound as if it comes from the Taliban, but those are all remarks either made personally by the United States’ increasingly hostile ally here, President Hamid Karzai, or issued by his office in recent days and weeks.

The strongest such outburst came Friday. “Let’s pray for God to rescue us from these two demons,” Mr. Karzai said, apparently holding back tears at a meeting with relatives of the massacre victims, and clearly referring to the United States and the Taliban in the same breath. “There are two demons in our country now.”

Ever since the Koran-burning episode on Feb. 20 and its violent aftermath, the relationship between the two governments has lurched from one crisis to another. American officials have scrambled to run damage control, with President Obama expressing a personal apology for the Koran burning, as well as regrets about the massacre, while calling Mr. Karzai twice in the past week.

The White House went to lengths last week to depict Mr. Karzai’s call for Americans to hand over control a year earlier, by 2013, as no change in policy — only to have Mr. Karzai pointedly insist the next day that it was. The Americans fret that Mr. Karzai is making a difficult job almost impossible, with demands they often see as unreasonable; Mr. Karzai worries that the Americans seek to undermine him, and may yet abandon his country and him, once again, to their fate.

The Koran burnings brought these differences into sharp relief, and led to a rupture in trust some view as irreparable. After an American unit at Bagram Air Base inadvertently burned Korans, embassy officials were deeply worried about an investigation conducted by the country’s Ulema Council, its highest religious body.

The council’s pronouncements, however, are closely controlled by Mr. Karzai’s office — they are even issued by the presidential palace — and American officials were assured by senior members on the president’s staff that the council’s report would be tough but not incendiary.

“We were ready to get knocked a bit,” said an American official who asked not to be identified to preserve his relationship with Afghan officials. “We messed up pretty badly.”

The original draft, in fact, was relatively moderate, American and Afghan officials said. But at the last minute more hard-line elements of Mr. Karzai’s staff weighed in, and the joint statement finally issued by the Ulema Council and the palace used language like “Satanic act” and “unforgivable, wild and inhuman” about the book burnings, and “justifiable emotion” in regard to the violent reaction, which claimed the lives of at least 29 Afghans and 6 Americans.

Western diplomats have often viewed Mr. Karzai’s outbursts as playing to the galleries, meant for consumption by his own people only, not as serious statements of policy. But the galleries also include the public in the United States and its NATO allies, where majorities in nearly every country oppose remaining in Afghanistan, and every new contretemps risks further eroding an already tenuous support.

“I think this is very serious because Mr. Karzai has always had a very ambivalent attitude toward the West and toward the war — he has never really believed violence is the answer,” said Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British ambassador to Afghanistan from 2007 through 2009. “He is also very conscious and very resentful that his political survival and even perhaps his personal safety depend on the Americans.”

The current American ambassador, the veteran diplomat Ryan C. Crocker, was brought out of semiretirement by President Obama last July at least in part because he had known Mr. Karzai since the beginning: Mr. Crocker was the first envoy to Afghanistan after the invasion that defeated the Taliban, when Mr. Karzai was appointed interim leader here.

Like many of his predecessors, Mr. Crocker began his latest tour on an optimistic note. “President Karzai has the toughest job in the world, and he has been doing it for the last 10 years,” Mr. Crocker said early on, and has repeated often since. “You have to give him credit.”

While the two men still have a working relationship and meet often, according to aides to both, there are many signs that the warmth has gone out of that relationship once again.

Mr. Crocker insisted in an interview with PBS on Friday that this was not the case.

“I think he is a committed Afghan nationalist, that at the end of the day he seeks the same goals we do,” the ambassador said. “And sometimes the rhetoric gets a little heated. Sometimes my rhetoric has been known to get a little bit heated in a few of these meetings, and then I go sit under a tree and think about the larger equities at stake, and we move on.”

From Mr. Karzai’s point of view, the Americans have repeatedly defied his demands to end commando night raids, and one civilian casualty after another has put him in the position of either criticizing the Americans and angering them, or not criticizing them and angering Afghans.

“In any relationship there are things that one party does that the other party doesn’t particularly care for, and that goes both ways,” said James Cunningham, the deputy ambassador to Afghanistan. “The question is not just whether President Karzai is a partner; we’re discussing and putting into place a partnership that is going to look forward a decade or so, and that’s a partnership with Afghanistan and its leaders, whoever they are.”

The relationship is so frayed, however, that Mr. Karzai often is quick to view everything through the prism of presumed American perfidy.

When American diplomats meet with his political opponents, he sees it as a sign that they are out to topple him from power — something that has reportedly obsessed him ever since the presidential election in 2009, which the international community saw as widely fraudulent. American officials pressured him into agreeing to a runoff, which in the end his opponents refused.

“We don’t have to be here running Afghanistan, and that is what people are afraid of,” Mr. Cunningham said. “We are not running Afghanistan, we are easing our way out, and I think that’s what feeds this whole dynamic. The notion that somehow we hold the upper hand, that’s not the right way to look at what we are trying to arrange. We are really, actually trying to arrange a partnership in which Afghans run their affairs,” he said.

The Taliban routinely deride Mr. Karzai as nothing more than an American puppet, but that is certainly not the view of his purported puppet masters. “Never in history has any superpower spent so much money, sent so many troops to a country, and had so little influence over what its president says and does,” one European diplomat marveled.

Americans have, however, wielded influence on many occasions, and President Karzai is still smarting from many of them. When an aide to Mr. Karzai was arrested by an American-backed corruption task force, the president intervened to secure his release, and then eviscerated the anticorruption body, the Major Crimes Task Force. But from Mr. Karzai’s point of view, the Americans never gave him the courtesy of warning that they planned to arrest a top official.

READ THE REST HERE

FullKenneth News Service, June 15, 2015

On the second anniversary of the withdrawal of the last American troops from Afghanistan, FullKenneth’s military correspondent sat down with a Pentagon official who agreed, on condition of anonymity, to divulge the real reason that the war ended in in the United States’ defeat.

FK: “Looking back, many people people now say that, following 9/11, we should have just bombed Afghanistan into rubble and left them to their own miserable devices. Instead, we stayed for twelve years, squandering American lives and expending nearly a trillion dollars.  What went wrong?”

(Redacted): “Well, there was a powerful cadre of asshats in the State Department and the White House who actually believed that a nation of illiterate, 7th-Century barbarians could be reformed into a Jeffersonian democracy. They just didn’t know squat about the culture of Afghanistan.”

FK: ”You’re talking, of course about their fierce attachment to Islam…”

(Redacted): ”(Snort) Listen, the Islam thing was the easy part.  We bought off every Imam in the whole freaking country for a cell phone, a Toyota pickup and a few hundred bucks.  That wasn’t the problem.  By about 2003, the Imams had everything under control and the peasants mostly settled down to watch our troops build schools and medical clinics, which they mistook for latrines.  Hell, they were even grateful: wintertime in the Hindu Kush, a comfy morning squat in a cinderblock girl’s school beat the heck out of trotting barefoot to the nearest irrigation ditch. No, the problem wasn’t Islam, it was the kiddie thing.  Man, when we crossed that line, all hell broke loose.”

FK: “The kiddie thing?”

(Redacted): “Little boys, little girls. Afghanistan was like a moonscape full of pedophiles, dating back way before Islam.  80-year-old village elders marrying 11-year old girls.  The whole Bacha Bazi thing…”

FK: “Bacha Bazi?”

(Redacted): “Dancing boys. Afghan men have this thing about parties where they dress little boys up like women and have ‘em dance around with bells on their ankles.  Pretty kinky stuff.  Big status symbol to have your own dancing boy and stroll around town holding hands. Not my thing, of course, but man, the Afghans really got into the groove with it..  So, anyway, some low level State Department gal caught wind of it and Condoleeza Rice read the riot act to Hamid Karzai, threatening to cut off funds.”

FK: “What happened then?”

(Redacted): “Karzai sent some goons out into the hinterlands to make a few symbolic arrests and suddenly, every child molester in Afghanistan put on a black turban, picked up an AK-47 and came charging down the mountains shouting Allahu Akbar!  We just never recovered our equilibrium.  (Sighs)  Well, it could have been worse…”

FK: “How so?”

(Redacted): ”For a time there, some animal-rights activists in the State Department were pushing for us to cross over the border into Waziristan and and interdict the traditional sex trafficking of Himalayan pygmy donkeys..  Sweet Jesus, you’re talking Pakistan.  Those suckers have nukes.”

These boys are not just “entertainers”, they’re also kept as lovers, and they’re usually between the ages of 14 and 18 years old. The boys dance at parties and weddings; and if they perform poorly their owners will beat them, because according to Allah Daad, “We have to do that, we spend money on these boys, so they have to dance“. These parties double as opportunities for the attendants to either buy the boys from their owners, or to have sex with them.

Bacha bazi boys usually come from difficult backgrounds, and have mostly lived in poverty or have been orphaned. Prosecution is difficult, and law enforcement lack the ability to stop it, especially when the police and district heads (in the areas where Bacha bazi is popular) refuse to cooperate with prosecutors. But they have been trying, as Hafizullah Khaliqyar says “We have 25 cases of such immoral acts. They are being processed and we are trying our utmost to tackle the problem.“

Just ignore the first 39 seconds of both videos:

Penn State Abuse Scandal: A Guide And Timeline
http://www.npr.org/2011/11/08/142111804/penn-state-abuse-scandal-a-guide-and-timeline

Preaching Virtue of Spanking, Even as Deaths Fuel Debate   http://goo.gl/8DYh0

Sybil and MPD http://sybilandmpd.blogspot.com/
The accuracy of Debbie Nathan ‘s Sybil Exposed book questioned.
Has evidence that the original Sybil book is true.

information from person that has MPD/DID
http://sybilandmpd.blogspot.com/2011/11/information-from-person-that-has-mpddid.html

from Sybil’s closest living relative
http://sybilandmpd.blogspot.com/2011/11/from-sybils-closest-living-relative.html

US embassy cables: Afghan government asks US to quash ‘dancing boys’ scandal  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/213720

Foreign contractors hired Afghan ‘dancing boys’, WikiLeaks cable reveals http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/02/foreign-contractors-hired-dancing-boys

Survivorship Ritual Abuse Webinar – Multiple’s Story of Hope & Healing
http://www.survivorship.org/webinars.html
Saturday, November 19  12 PM  PST

Maciej Dakowicz A Saturday night out Blackpool, England, 2010

This is an example of one for Adobo! Every good hispanic and non hispanic should have a bottle of Adobo in their cupboard! It’s like the Old Bay Seasoning of Spanish Food! I love it. I put it on everything and I do mean everything! (Don’t you get any ideas!)

You are gonna love this!!

Adobo makes everything taste better, especially when Momma Gladys is involved!
Momma Gladys’ Adobo I guess it is…for now!!

Many Thanks to Lori Leshner, Jeff Biering, Michael Bragg, Gabriel Beck, Tony Neidenbach, Sean Quinn, Kristin Donnelly, John Dolan, Curtis Wiley & West Side Dance Project! I couldn’t have done it without you!

Deliciously Living,

Michael Muñoz
The Gay Gourmet!™

©2011 Michael Muñoz

a) the practice is growing and is “it is the on the increase in almost every region of Afghanistan,” and not just in Pashtun regions;
b) those behind the practice are “wealthy and powerful“–so not so “widespread” that everybody can afford to pay for such boys;
c) and, that the boys are driven into this commodified practice as a result of extreme impoverishment that is directly attributable to the war: “His father died in the fields, when he stepped on a landmine…’We were hungry, I had no choice. Sometimes we go to bed on empty stomachs. When I dance at parties I earn about $2 or some pilau rice’,” which ought to also limit any claim that this is “about homosexuality,” the way HTS and the compliant war media argue.

And who helps to fuel the practice? Is it some generic “Pashtun culture”? Thanks to materials released via Wikileaks, we learn that foreign private security contractors–specifically with DynCorp–paid for young dancing boys to entertain them, and took drugs. Moreover, the scandal was situated in Kunduz, a northern region away from where Cardinalli was based. In fact, it was the Afghan government that tried to put a stop to it, and the U.S. Embassy refused to get involved. In another failure of mainstream American journalism, the Washington Post was aware of these details, and chose to minimize them in a story that appeared back in July, “which made little of the affair, saying it was an incident of ‘questionable management oversight’ in which foreign DynCorp workers ‘hired a teenage boy to perform a tribal dance at a company farewell party’” (source).

If the HTS “researcher” Cardinalli were producing anything other than an instrument of propaganda, proclaiming the timelessness and essential Pashtun-ness of the practice, divorced from history and context, shorn of the role played by the foreign occupation in arming and funding those paying for the practice, and adding its own personnel to those paying for the practice that employs children victimized by war…then she might have an ounce of credibility. Instead, we are treated to ignorance with her facile comments about “Pashtun culture” when, as Jamil Hanifi already explained,

“Bacha bazi (n.v., boy playing) is a Farsi/Dari construct in Afghanistan. There is no counterpart for this construct in Paxtu and Paxtun dominated parts of the country. Likewise, Bacha baz (n.v., boy player) is also a Farsi/Dari construct which does not have a counterpart construct in Paxtu.

“The phenomenon is openly marked in the popular culture of non-Paxtun areas in Afghanistan (especially in Kabul [mostly non-Paxtun], northern Afghanistan with a concentration in large urban areas like Herat, Mazar-e Sharif, Qunduz, Maimana. The Paxtun dominated city of Qandahar is the exception to this. However, the practice does occur, probably with less proportional frequency, among Paxtuns.”

But Cardinalli says, “To dismiss the existence of this dynamic out of desire to avoid Western discomfort is to risk failing to comprehend an essential social force underlying Pashtun culture which can potentially effect  [sic] the success” of the U.S. effort.” An essential social force, Pashtun culture, and avoiding Western discomfort. Interesting that Cardinalli avoids her Western discomfort by dismissing the dynamic where it is the very occupation that she supports that has enabled and fueled the revival of this practice, in areas far from the “homeland of the Taleban,” on which her dim sights are set. This would not be so problematic, if it were the only time we read crudely decontextualized, ahistorical, Orientalist and even racist blather from the ranks of HTS “researchers.” The only “good news” is that the more they write, the more they indict themselves.

The newest meme from /r/Leakspin/

Cable: 09kabul1651

US State Dept. called ownership of Afghan ‘dancing boys’ a ‘culturally sanctioned form of male rape’

The Afghanistan interior minister was so concerned about an incident where DynCorp, a US contractor charged with training Afghan police, bought drugs and paid for young “dancing boys” that he asked the US embassy to work to “quash” the story, a secret US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks indicates.

In Afghan society, “dancing boys” are little boys dressed as girls, commonly abused and kept by some men as possessions.

Dancing boys, alter boys, rent boys — fundamentalist repression and religion feeds all kinds of abuse.

Related Wikileaks cable via Guardian.

WikiLeaks loses American domain server, wikileaks.org, moves to Swiss, wikileaks.ch, which also appears to be down at present:
“WikiLeaks Dropped by Domain Name Provider,” The Associated Press

“WikiLeaks Vanishes From Web As U.S. Company Removes DNS Support,” The Guardian

Update from Amazon in The Wall Street Journal on the fairly obvious reason why WikiLeaks got booted off its servers (violation of its Terms of Service):
“Amazon Says WikiLeaks Violated Terms of Service,” Wall Street Journal

8:37AM EST – The Guardian is holding a live webchat with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as soon as it can:
“WikiLeaks cables: Live Q&A with Julian Assange,” The Guardian

9:32AM EST – Crippling attacks continue, take down Guardian website during online Q&A with Assange:
“WikiLeaks fights to stay online amid attacks,” The Associated Press

“WikiLeaks’ Assange to Fight Any Extradition: Lawyer,” Reuters

“WikiLeaks Struggles to Stay Online After Cyberattacks,” The New York Times

“Julian Assange Answers Your Questions,” The Guardian

Afghanistan:

“Foreign Contractors Hired Afghan ‘Dancing Boys’, WikiLeaks Cable Reveals,” The Guardian
Courtesy Katherine Tiedemann of AfPak Channel Daily Brief, Foreign Policy, “international contractors employed by DynCorp training Afghan police forces allegedly took drugs and paid for young “dancing boys” in Kunduz…”

India/Pakistan:

Radically different takes in the Indian and Pakistani press on revelations concerning U.S. protection of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the wake of the Mumbai attacks in November 2008 – first the Indians, who probably cut more to the bone while maintaining a defensive posture:
“U.S. Defended Pak, Shielded ISI Chief After 26/11 Strikes?” Times of India
“Diplomats Saw No ISI Link in Mumbai Attack,” Dawn

More – General Kayani tells General Petraeus Pakistan will respond if provoked in wake of Mumbai attacks:
“Kayani told U.S. that Pakistan will respond to Indian attack: WikiLeaks,” The Hindu

European Politics:

“WikiLeaks Cables: Gordon Brown An ‘Abysmal’ Prime Minister,” The Guardian
“…scathing assessment of the former prime minister…”

“Aznar al embajador, en 2007: ‘Si veo a España desesperada, quizá tendría que volver a la política’” El Pais [in Spanish]
Shows former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar would like to orchestrate his own return to power if Mariano Rajoy cannot hold the Partido Popular (PP) together and stand in the next general election.

“Mole in Germany’s FDP Party Comes Forward,” Der Spiegel Online International

More on the not-quite revelations about Berlusconi’s personal and political life and allegations that he and Putin are skimming off the top of Gazprom contracts in U.S. diplomatic cables has some fall out domestically for Berlusconi in Italy:
“Caustic U.S. Views of Berlusconi Churn Italy’s Politics,” The New York Times

Updates in Eurasia:

“WikiLeaks may galvanise Turkey on relations with Azerbaijan,” News.Az
An interview with Gareth Jenkins, a Turkey expert affiliated with the Silk Road Studies Program at Johns Hopkins.

previous related posts:
“The Moment: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan Throws a Book at My Head,” November 12, 2010.

U.S. domestic:

“The State Department Should Embrace Its New Wikileaks Cablegate Transparency,” Forbes
Argues the State Department looks great and this serves as a recruitment tool in the fashion that “Top Gun” did for the Air Force.

“Authors, Historians Debate the Leaks of WikiLeaks,” The Associated Press

“Jon Stewart: Is Sarah Palin Aware Julian Assange Can’t Be Charged With Treason?” Daily Show

previous posts on WikiLeaks “Cablegate”:

“The Best in WikiLeaks Cablegate Coverage from News Sites Around the World,” December 2, 2010.

“Mafia Analogies for the Aliyev Family in Wikileaks/U.S. State Department Cablegate: Is He Michael or Sonny?” December 2, 2010.

“‘A Caususes Wedding,’ A Pictoral Accompaniment to the Cable of the Same Name,” November 30, 2010.

Obviously it’s not just dancing that the boys do. They are taken to hotel rooms and raped.

Read the BBC article on it or watch the Frontline program.

The very thought of all this makes me sick to my stomach. Buying and selling of people is an incredibly wide-spread and profitable trade today. How can it be that today there are approximately 23-27 million slaves in the world? That is more slaves than were traded when slave trade was an official business in Europe and America.The incredible thing is, that now that we’re all supposedly so civilized there is enough demand for this kind of stuff that it keeps on growing!

William Wilberforce, a British politician, spent his entire life and health trying to end the slave trade. Where are today’s Wilberforces who will stand up against the abuse of boys in Afghanistan or selling of girls in Thailand or child prostitution in Atlanta? How could you help one person?

The Telling of a Tale

There is no “scoop” in Joel Brinkley’s article, “Afghanistan’s dirty little secret” (29 August 2010, San Francisco Chronicle)—just an ugly sensationalist title on a story already abundantly covered by PBS Frontline months ago (see: “The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan”). What is more distinctive about Brinkley’s piece is the level of demonizing to sell war, and the involvement of AnnaMaria Cardinalli, an employee with the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System—a basic fact which Brinkley smudges out of view for the entire article, where HTS is not mentioned even once. Thanks to Brinkley’s clumsy use of an airbrush, Cardinalli is transformed into a “military investigator,” someone expressly hired by the Defense Department to investigate the “dancing boys” controversy: “the Defense Department hired Cardinalli, a social scientist, to examine this mystery.” The article is about Afghan men who gawk at and take little boys for sex. It mixes a fair amount of pedophilia, homophobia, and Islamophobia, all in a short space. The article even manages three paragraphs casting aspersions on Afghan President Hamid Karzai as someone whose family is likely to have indulged in sex with little boys—not the first time that Americans have thrown mud at their own, presumably trusted, ally.

Brinkley refers to a shocking line in a U.S. State Department report (from 2009)—he focuses on this: “A recent State Department report called ‘dancing boys’ a ‘widespread, culturally sanctioned form of male rape’.” The actual paragraph—and it is one alone—from the 2009 U.S. State Department report on human rights in Afghanistan (hardly a credible source, given that it is from one of the lead combatants in a war that is the cause of the greatest number of human rights violations), still manages to be a little more nuanced than Brinkley:

“Sexual abuse of children remained pervasive. NGOs noted that most child victims were abused by extended family members. A UNHCR report noted tribal leaders also abused boys. During the year the MOI recorded 17 cases of child rape; the unreported number was believed to be much higher. In January and February, the ANP arrested men in three separate cases of the rape of boys in Jowzjan province. According to the AIHRC, most child sexual abusers were not arrested. Numerous reports alleged that harems of young boys were cloistered for ‘bacha baazi’ (boy-play) for sexual and social entertainment; although credible statistics were difficult to acquire, as the subject was a source of shame and ‘dancing boys’ was a widespread culturally sanctioned form of male rape.”

Widespread, but statistics are difficult to acquire. Shameful, yet culturally sanctioned.

The paradoxes are missed by readers without an eye for subtlety. What is intended is that “we” imagine: that we imagine how much worse it must be, how many more untold cruelties and savage atrocities must be occurring…in lurid little Afghanistan, fatherland of the boy fuckers. It is a warmed over tale of colonial chronicles of “the cannibals”:

“They are a very bellicose people, naked and idolatrous, and they eat human flesh, and beneath these vices one must believe that they have many others”

(Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo. 1959. Historia General y Natural de las Indias, II. Juan Perez de Tudela Bueso, ed. Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, Colección Rivadeneira. Madrid: Real Academia Española. P. 387).

“There’s no issue more horrifying and more deserving of our attention than this,” Cardinalli tells Brinkley. “I’m continually haunted by what I saw.” An American employed by the Pentagon tells an American reporter that what is continually haunting are images of dancing boys—because all the warfare is much more palatable, or so “normal” for an American that it’s easy to miss the sounds of gunfire and explosions. But then that’s the point: promoting a war of occupation because of the “horror” of an unstated number of dancing boys.

The State Department’s lack of “credible statistics,” is transformed by Brinkley into an atrocity on a massive scale, with known numbers, numbers that even permit cross national comparison:

“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?”

Your source? Who cares, this is American war “journalism.” Brinkley can count as his own source, and still win over the public…to war.

As for Cardinalli’s background, it is in theology and Latino studies, focusing on Spanish flamenco and New Mexico. She “identifies herself first as a musician.” No background, in other words, in Islam, Afghanistan, Central Asia, gender and sexuality studies. Her only building blocks for an approach to this issue is that she is an American, employed with the Human Terrain System, in a war zone. Back home she would be on tour, in restaurants, with El Duo Dende. In Afghanistan, thanks to Brinkley, she becomes his sole source, a trusted authority on Afghan culture. How easy it is for the delegates of the motherland to make their reputations in the colonies, on the backs of inferior natives.

AnnaMaria Cardinalli, putting her skills to use for the U.S. Army's Human Terrain System, a counterinsurgency program that now fancies itself as a savior of abused children.

Who are these ‘Dancing Boys’?

Bacha bazi (n.v., boy playing) is a Farsi/Dari construct in Afghanistan. There is no counterpart for this construct in Paxtu and Paxtun dominated parts of the country. Likewise, Bacha baz (n.v., boy player) is also a Farsi/Dari construct which does not have a counterpart construct in Paxtu.

The phenomenon is openly marked in the popular culture of non-Paxtun areas in Afghanistan (especially in Kabul [mostly non-Paxtun], northern Afghanistan with a concentration in large urban areas like Herat, Mazar-e Sharif, Qunduz, Maimana. The Paxtun dominated city of Qandahar is the exception to this. However, the practice does occur, probably with less proportional frequency, among Paxtuns.

The power relational aspect of this phenomenon should be emphasized. The stigma of having been a “boy” is a lifelong burden to a man. It is a lifelong disadvantage. No one will give a woman in marriage to a person who has once been played with as a “boy.” Thus, Bacha bazi is rarely flaunted; it is kept on a clandestine level.

Media Misrepresentation

The issue here is Joel Brinkley’s violent distortion and misrepresentation of the culture and society of the noble people of Afghanistan. It is about the contamination of the minds of the good and innocent people of the United States with poisonous anecdotal and unfounded claims about a vast and diverse Muslim society in which the American military is spending hundreds of millions of our tax dollars every day in the pursuit of a culture cleansing project driven by distorted and stereotypical images of Afghan men, women, and children produced by people like Brinkley.

The professional, educational thing to do would be to have Stanford University and the San Francisco Chronicle jointly organize a public forum in which Brinkely would be required to produce all the evidence on which he based his published writings about social life in Afghanistan and have his descriptions and conclusions confronted with properly produced ethnographic texts and the cultural realities of Afghanistan.

An Anthropologist Confronts a Journalist

Mr. Brinkley:

Your article titled “Afghanistan’s dirty little secret” published in the August 29th, 2010 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle (and circulated by you in numerous other media venues) is a stark and sorry reflection of the poverty of institutional academic and professional journalistic standards in the American media constantly spewing lies, misinformation and distortions about Other cultures and societies. This unfortunate (and dangerous) state of affairs is responsible for the ongoing global insecurity, war, bloodshed, and the massive willful destruction inflicted by the United Sates on the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Given what is known about your academic and “journalistic” background and that of your partner in ignorance, AnnaMaria Cardinalli (of the HTS), I am not surprised about your flawed and totally baseless commentary and categorical conclusions about complex cultural and social conditions in Afghanistan. Bacha Bazi is indeed practiced in some social locations in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan and elsewhere, it is fundamentally a relation of power, an outcome of class and age inequality. The current pattern of this inequality in Afghanistan is exacerbated by heightened poverty and disproportionately high numbers of orphans during the recent decades caused by the destruction of the Afghan state apparatus for which America is chiefly responsible. The regular reports in the United States from former male victims of rape in the Catholic Church are forms of resistance to this structure of inequality. I remember an example from Afghanistan. During 1950-51 I lived in Qandahar for a few months. I vividly remember information being circulated in public about an incident in which a young boy, as a victim of an attempted rape, had severed with a knife the penis of the rapist. The boy became a local hero and I later learned that the rapist had vanished into the status of a despised malang.

Name the sociologists and anthropologists who “say the problem results from perverse interpretations of Islamic law”? Stop spreading untruths about the people of Afghanistan. Stop essentializing all Afghans with anecdotal absurdities from fictive individuals—“Mohammed Daud” and “Enyatullah”—and the confused AnnaMaria Cardinalli who knows virtually nothing about Islam and the ethnography and ethnology of Afghanistan.  Yes, sex before marriage is not allowed in Afghan local culture. But how and why should this be the cause of sexual abuse of boys by men? Women’s faces, chests, arms, and legs are visible (and accessible) in virtually all locations of public culture in the United States. Yet Catholic priests and other American men sexually abuse young boys at probably the same rate as in Afghanistan? Why? Remember all human populations produce about two percent homosexuals. In Islam and Afghan local culture menstruating women incur a state of ritual pollution. Intercourse with such women is considered ritually polluting. This is a cultural construct. You have no business questioning the integrity of this construct. And remember refraining from sexual intercourse with menstruating women is also (for a variety of reasons) installed, in a variety of ways and degrees of emphasis, in Euro-American and other cultures. Take a look at comparative global ethnography.

It is likely that in writing this narrative of distortions, you have been inspired by Frontline’s “Dancing Boys of Afghanistan”. Anyone with basic competence in Afghan local culture can see and hear that the DBA story is scripted and staged and that it lacks local social and cultural validity and integrity.

The abuse of young boys in Afghanistan is, in principle and extent, not different from the sexual abuse of young boys in the Catholic Church and other locations of Euro-American and other cultures. It is not unique to Afghanistan. Your understanding and analysis of perceptions of Afghan women by Afghan men is truly defective. You should learn to frame such complexities in a properly informed local and comparative perspective. As a bonus, such a perspective would also help you acquire a systematic and culturally grounded understanding of the high rate of incest and sexual abuse of young boys and girls in the United States.

You have poisoned the minds of innocent Americans and violently distorted a complex socio-cultural phenomenon in Afghanistan. Stanford University is a reputable institution of higher learning. You have stained that distinguished reputation. And you are not “a professor of journalism at Stanford University.” You are a “professional in residence” at Stanford. Stop manipulating the prestige of academic ranks and institutions in constructing and vending Zionist anti-Islamic propaganda and lies about the good and NORMAL people of Afghanistan. Shame on you and your collaborators for producing such fraudulent and baseless venom. You owe your readers a profound public apology.

M. Jamil Hanifi

*****

Joel Brinkley [mailto:jbrink@stanford.edu]

Sent: Sunday, September 05, 2010 1:54 PM

To: M. Jamil Hanifi

Subject: Re: Lies about Afghanistan from Joel Brinkley

Mr. Hanifi,

First, let me inform you that I have not “circulated” my column to “numerous other media venues.” My weekly column is syndicated, which means that a syndication services sells it to whichever newspapers want to buy it. Second, I did a great deal more research for that article than is immediately evident from reading it, including speaking to several Afghans. I am confident of its accuracy. In fact, since its publication, I have heard from several Afghans who say the problem is worse than I have portrayed it.

Joel Brinkley

*****

Mr. Brinkley:

Let us expose to public view your “great deal” of research about this subject. Where, when, and how was this research produced? Identify the “several Afghans who say the problem is worse.” I am prepared to offer a frontal engagement to your baseless claims (and their sources including the “several Afghans”) in a public forum at Stanford University. You arrange for this. I will come there at my own expense. Snippets of gossip and anecdotal information should never be allowed to demonize a vast and diverse socio-cultural system across the board. Essentializing the 30 million people of Afghanistan with a few street corner telltales is the height of moral, political, journalistic, and academic irresponsibility.

Remember Where the Taleban Stood on the Sexual Abuse of Boys?

Ironically, as some online comments note, the tale of the dancing boys would seem to vindicate the Taleban and call for the return of their harsh and systematic justice that severely punished such behaviour. Remember what Ahmed Rashid discovered about the origins of the hero stories surrounding Mullah Omar’s rise to popularity:

“A few months later two commanders confronted each other in Kandahar, in a dispute over a young boy whom both men wanted to sodomise. In the fight that followed civilians were killed. Omar’s group freed the boy and public appeals started coming in for the Taliban to help out in other local disputes. Omar had emerged as a Robin Hood figure, helping the poor against the rapacious commanders. His prestige grew because he asked for no reward or credit from those he helped, only demanding that they follow him to set up a just Islamic system.”

Nonetheless, this does not prevent the subtext from being that which it became through circulation of stories such as that of the dancing boys, or Aisha—that the U.S. must remain in Afghanistan to prevent such abuses from happening when, if anything, such abuses have had a resurgence since the U.S. invaded. More than just one party is guilty of pimping these little boys.

Related Articles

• JOEL BRINKLEY | Afghanistan’s Dirty Little Secret (kitsapsun.com)
• Boys in Afghanistan (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
• Child abuse in Afghanistan (salon.com)
• In Afghanistan, We’re Looking The Other Way As Police, Tribal Leaders Commit Child Rape (crooksandliars.com)
• Tragic dance (bbc.co.uk)

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 Nazir Alimy, 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.

Reprint, Source: PBS Frontline Documentary

Aired: April 20, 2010