"There's no issue more horrifying and more deserving of our attention than this," Cardinalli said.
It's not homosexuality, they aver, because they aren't in love with their boys.Īddressing the loathsome mistreatment of Afghan women remains a primary goal for coalition governments, as it should be.īut 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. That helps explain why women are hidden away - and stoned to death if they are perceived to have misbehaved. 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?" One married man even asked Cardinalli's team "how his wife could become pregnant," her report said. 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. "We can see the boys, so we can tell which are beautiful."Įven after marriage, many men keep their boys, suggesting a loveless life at home. "How can you fall in love if you can't see her face," 29-year-old Mohammed Daud told reporters. Before then, they can't even look at a woman, except perhaps her feet. Afghan men cannot talk to an unrelated woman until after proposing marriage. Sociologists and anthropologists say the problem results from perverse interpretation of Islamic law. 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? A recent State Department report called "dancing boys" a "widespread, culturally sanctioned form of male rape." 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.
In Kandahar, population about 500,000, and other towns, dance parties are a popular, often weekly, pastime. He was in his palace most of the time." He, too, declined to be identified. He added, "I didn't see Karzai with anyone. Afraid of retribution, both declined to be identified and would not be more specific for publication.Īs 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. 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. President Hamid Karzai is Pashtun, from a village near Kandahar, and he has six brothers. For centuries, the nation's leaders have been Pashtun. The Pashtun are Afghanistan's most important tribe. "Whoever wants to show off should have a boy."īaghlan province is in the northeast, but Afghans say pedophilia is most prevalent among Pashtun men in the south.
"Having a boy has become a custom for us," Enayatullah, a 42-year-old in Baghlan province, told a Reuters reporter.
Literally it means "boy player." The men like to boast about it. 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. For centuries, Afghan men have taken boys, roughly 9 to 15 years old, as lovers.