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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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 Posted: Thu Apr 15, 2010 9:16 pm Post subject: The law of unintended consequences: bacha bazi |
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http://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2010/04/12/a-deal-with-the-devil/
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... the resurgence of bacha bazi or "boy play" among the wealthiest and most powerful men in northern Afghanistan.
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Bacha bazi is an old Afghan tradition of taking young boys, dressing them up like girls, and making them perform for older men in tea rooms, weddings, and other private venues. The boys are "owned" by single or married men who trade or keep the boys as concubines. According to reports, the boys� ages range from eight to 19, when they "age out" of the practice and are released.
"The bacha dancers are often abused children whose families have rejected them," said the Guardian�s Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, who wrote about the practice in September. He described one boy who was sexually assaulted by a mechanic in his town. The boy�s family blamed him and turned him out. He was forced to live with the man who attacked him. "Now I am with someone else, and he taught me how to dance," the boy, now 16 years old, said.
Other reports describe bacha bazi as an increasingly lucrative business, in which the boy slaves are seen as important status symbols of the elite. "Everyone tries to have the best, most handsome, and good-looking boy," a former mujahedin commander told Reuters back in 2007.
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But it is when Afghan soldiers move beyond consensual "man-love Thursdays" with each other to procuring young boys in broad daylight that the flood of revulsion, resentment, and awkward questions comes to bear. Do they have the right to discipline? Would there be reprisals if they complained?
In 2008, apparently fed up, Canadian soldiers and chaplains did begin to complain.
In June that year the Toronto Star reported that a Canadian soldier said he witnessed in 2006 injuries sustained by a boy he had heard was raped by an Afghan soldier at one of the Canadian outposts in Kandahar. These injuries included the boy�s intestines falling out of his body, a "sign of trauma from anal rape." The Canadian�s testimony, in addition to other complaints, including an eyewitness account of the rape of a boy by two Afghan military personnel at Canada�s Forward Operating Base Wilson in 2006, formed the basis of an official investigation into whether the brass were ignoring complaints about systematic abuse up through 2007.
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The Taliban reportedly banned these practices when it was in power. Today, clerics we would consider radical openly and regularly condemn bacha bazi and sex with children. "Under Islamic law, those who practice this would be stoned to death," Mawllawi Mohammaed Sadiq Sadiqyar, a prayer leader and scholar in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, told Reuters.
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An interview with the author of this article:
http://www.kaosradioaustin.org/node/27279
Skip to minute 37. |
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rollo
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: China
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| Posted: Fri Apr 16, 2010 8:39 pm Post subject: |
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| This is sickening but the use of boys as sex slaves is an old tradition and has beeen reported on in other sources. During the soviet invasion when the mujahadin would capture Russian troops they would often select a young , handsome prisoner and make him the concubine for the troops. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Fri Apr 16, 2010 11:09 pm Post subject: |
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^That's right. This is tradition going on thousands of years. The child sex abuse witchhunt dogma here in the West is just so impervious.
Dontcha just love how we go around the world imposing our morality on other cultures? Even leftists are refusing to see that.
These boys are being thrown out by their families. What would happen to them if no one took them in? |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sat Apr 17, 2010 5:59 am Post subject: |
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| bacasper wrote: |
Dontcha just love how we go around the world imposing our morality on other cultures?
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The practice had been eliminated by the taliban. That's why the thread is called what it is. When we meddle we can't predict the outcomes. |
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The Happy Warrior
Joined: 10 Feb 2010
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| Posted: Sat Apr 17, 2010 8:04 am Post subject: |
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| Its true. The actions the suicide terrorists took on 9-11 had many consequences, some intended, some unintended. |
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rollo
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: China
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| Posted: Sat Apr 17, 2010 9:08 am Post subject: |
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| eliminated by the Taliban?? Hardly. Of course most of the Taliban were younger and had never been in Afghanistan. these were young men raised in the refugee camps in Pakistan, so perhaps its practice wasnt as common, but it was not a policy to eliminate it. |
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Interested
Joined: 10 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 9:02 pm Post subject: |
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| I watched a documentary on this practice not so long ago. I wished I hadn't. |
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rollo
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: China
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| Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 11:15 pm Post subject: |
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| I do beleive that a Taliban cleric openly kept a couple of young boys. Please I am a little confused. How exactly did American actions , cause Afghan men to rape boys. I really am not getting the connection. |
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