'Dancing Boys Of Afghanistan': Bacha Bazi Documentary Exposes Horrific Sexual Abuse Of Young Afghan Boys (VIDEO)

PBS's Frontline has posted their latest piece online, and it is both fascinating and horrifying. "The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan" exposes the horrific practice called Bacha Bazi, in which young Afghan boys are sold to warlords and powerful businessmen to be trained as dancers who perform for male audiences in women's clothing and are then used and traded for sex. The practice is sadly making a comeback in that country.

Frontline writes:

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 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."

Watch a clip below. The full documentary can be seen here. Warning: the content is graphic and disturbing.

Comments

[Donald Trump]

09:10 PM on 05/08/2010

I hope the Obama administration takes a look at this practice in Afghanistan and eliminates it. Public awareness is needed. These boys should qualify for refugee status in the United States and be placed in foster care. These boys will be the future terrorists of the world if we do not try to help them.

[BlackYowe]

03:21 PM on 05/05/2010

Child trafficing here in the USA
http://abcnews.go.com/US/domestic-sex-trafficking-increasing-united-states/story?id=10557194

[reasonshouldrule]

10:31 PM on 04/25/2010

I couldn't even watch this, and I want to throw up. How and why do we have such sickening evil in the world?

[Lore Splitt]

03:25 PM on 04/25/2010

Talk about feeling physically ill watching something...

Things like this happen in so many countries, all over the world- even if it isn't young boys, than young girls... children get exploited everywhere. Not for nothing, every one I've known who's been in the foster care system have been raped or at the very least molested in one of their placements- "payment" in a way for a home being "opened up" to them. (Not saying all foster homes are like that, but- many are)

People need to feel outraged at this... but it's the local governments with the power to change things, it's the people in the area that need to say "enough"- but when it's seen as acceptable to many in the region, that's when it becomes a near hopeless situation.

I feel many times the UN isn't as great as it could be, but, that's the organizations that can put pressure on these countries to work on these issues under penalties of trade embargoes. Such a thing is a dangerous path for an organization to take, but the only thing I can think of that could pressure change.

[blackjack12]

04:12 AM on 04/25/2010

That this doesn't make the average huffpo commenter want to puke, makes me realize what liberals really stand for nothing, just sick.

[Lore Splitt]

03:27 PM on 04/25/2010

Saying liberals aren't nauseated by this is just as absurd as a liberal assuming that a conservative wouldn't be.

Again, something like this should transcend such labels like "liberal" and "conservative", "democrat" and "republican".

If this doesn't make a HUMAN BEING sick, there is something deeply wrong with that person. Period, end of story.

[dresdengirl]

04:25 PM on 04/25/2010

Well said.

[Zyzzybalubah]

04:46 PM on 04/25/2010

Yeah, because Fox was all over this story.

When the light goes off above your head and you realize it was PBS...that liberal bastion whose funding you no doubt sought to cut...that brought this story to light, then maybe you'll pull yourself away from your Birther meetings and share with us your epiphany. Until then, do something useful and keep us apprised on the latest American Idol developments.

[floodberg]

02:58 PM on 04/24/2010

I'd like to point out that all crimes of abuse against adults, children and animals are crimes of power; they have nothing to do with sexual orientation of the abuser or the abused (there are stats on this; most male/male predators are heterosexual, as are their victims; there's also no reliable stats indicating that homosexuals statistically abuse more than heterosexuals) nor with sex.

Quite literally, it's the 'I can do it, so I will' mentality, in which conscience fails for whatever reason to override an urge.

[Lore Splitt]

03:33 PM on 04/25/2010

Very good point floodberg. People always think sexual orientation has to do with it when pedophilia transcends any of that. It's like rape (well, it is rape), when adults rape other adults, it isn't the actual act of sex that they find arousing, it's the forcing another to submit that arouses them.

No male friend of mine would be able to continue to have sex with a woman who was screaming and crying for him to get off, they would find that a turn off. But other people- My friends and I will browse through craigslist ads and email ones to each other that are funny- especially in the casual encounters sections- but, I see ads on there that are just horrifying. Men looking for women who "want to be raped", and the things they want to do to them is so mortifying. They get off on inflicting pain, on subjecting someone to fear...

It really isn't a homosexual/heterosexual thing. Especially when it comes to children.

[floodberg]

09:43 PM on 04/25/2010

I've been a lawyer way too long to let what people say determine my opinions. In law school, I wrote a paper on child sexual predators; and surprisingly, white heterosexual males beat everyone else. Family members far outstrip strangers or acquaintances. My professional experiences are consistent with this. I hate it when people 'make up' ideology to serve their purposes when the stats are right online.

A friend of mine (officer, USN) was pregnant with her hubby (officer, USMC), when she discovered he had a gay brother living. The family had disowned him years earlier (the sleezy lawyer got to stay, go figure.) She was shocked, and they contacted him; he was a professional with a longterm partner/spouse, and could no longer work consistently with AIDs. They moved brother (Uncle) into their home (the partner couldn't move, but he visited and the relationship continued.) Uncle became caretaker/godfather to the baby (his namesake), and spoiled that little boy rotten. Uncle's friends also were regulars; that child has about 5 'uncles' watching him through school and college, kibbitzing all the time. (Uncle and spouse have since passed on. The other 'uncles' still visit regularly and keep an eagle eye on their nephew.)

People are human beings; let's quit judging on stupid stuff (race, religion, party, sexual preference, 'class', etc.,) and deal with each other with human dignity.

[christopheles63]

03:03 PM on 04/30/2010

Very superficial. I suppose you would also contend that bank robberies are not about money. where did this bit of psycho-sexual wisdom (rape is not about sex) come from, anyway? Granted, healthy people do not require degradation to achieve sexual satisfaction. Some, however--those we call perverts and/or socio-paths--do. So the most that can be said is that sexually healthy/normal individuals do not require coercive violence to 'get off'--though the sense of being over-whelmed, 'forced', or used may be present in the experience of final surrender and orgasm (as Otto Kernberg points out).

One need only look at the predilection of women for bad-boy types (that is to say--outsiders, deviants, rebels, etc.) and the frequency of rape fantasies to realize that the idea of being a helpless victim (masochism) is--to use a term I loath--"hard-wired" into human (make that primate) sexuality. And I don't care how many instances of Bonobo behavior anyone cites to the contrary. All that's required is an unflinching stare into one's own dark abyss.

[nikanj]

12:01 PM on 04/24/2010

Nothing new. Oscar Wilde's boyfriend describes such an encounter in his diary
(quoted in POX : The History of Syhpilis, a very interesting book) --
They are at a cafe and the boyfriend notices Oscar is lusting after a 'dancing flutist, with limpid eyes and
long limbs', so to please his lover the boyfriend arranges to hire the flutist, and also a boy for himself.

A few years later, he sees the flutist again, but by then the drugs and deranged behaviors have taken
their toll and he is no longer a 'lissome youth', but hardened by opium and abuse.
Probably syphilitic by then as well.

[booboopickle]

09:05 AM on 04/24/2010

It is RELIGION in all of its various grotesque forms that is main source of depravity that makes people do horrible sexual acts against children. You dont see atheists going it. Atheists are nicer people, dont have all of that insanity and demons in their heads etc...

[Michele Himmel]

09:48 AM on 04/25/2010

Proof about atheists? Well..............

[Paula Ann]

12:26 PM on 04/25/2010

if sharia was truly enforced in afghanistan, the buyers and sellers of children for sex would be executed.

[harriettubman]

11:35 PM on 04/23/2010

Sick, just sick. And in these countries who do you see trying to buy these children? Some wealthy, elderly white guy.

[EagleFliesInSky]

10:56 AM on 04/24/2010

Not white guys. Read the article again. It's Afghan men who 'buy' them.

[laborgrunt]

10:47 PM on 04/23/2010

SICK PEDERASTS!!!!!
Do you think whenever you lock out women from large swaths of society, kind of like with the Priest hood and Afghanistan, grown dudes turn to little boy as a result? Its so disgusting.

[Ergon]

09:59 PM on 04/23/2010

This not involvfing the Pope or the Church, won't make the front page of the New York Times dozens of times.

[cadyron]

07:56 PM on 04/23/2010

When I was a Marine in one of these countries (I dont want to say) I was told by a man that considered himself straight that he had sex with men because he just didnt have any choice, there were no women available. I dont know if im explaining it correctly but his views and that of his friends were that if the only sex I can have is with a man then so be it. I think in afganistan where you rarely even see a woman this kind of thing has become in some bizzaro way acceptable. Out of sexual desperation they dress up a little boy to dance around like a girl. it's crazy. Also something else I noticed while I was in the middle east that I thought was pretty nuts was little boys dressed as girls and when you asked the people why? They always said the same thing, we wanted a girl and got a boy, just wanted to see what it would be like to dress a little girl. I think it's all very sick and nutty.

[JacksonD]

08:18 PM on 04/23/2010

Very sad. This is one of many byproducts of a religion that makes that which is natural, unnatural.

Children deserve a better life than this nightmare and this pedastery is beyond disgusting.

[harriettubman]

11:37 PM on 04/23/2010

I heard this from another Marine too who was stationed in another Middle Eastern country. He said those men said they "played" with the men until they "married" the women. Ugh! They pretend to the world that they're so devoted to Is lam but this is what they've created. Same for hetero men in prison. No women, they find a man to satisfy them.

[JacksonD]

02:13 AM on 04/24/2010

I've heard it termed "prison culture" and it's bad enough for men, I can't fathom what it must be like for a child or young teen.

[Two Cents]

05:09 PM on 04/23/2010

. . . I'm watching my six year old son build a movie theatre out of Legos--&, for now, v. happy we're safely nestled in a mid-west suburb (which isn't without it's issues, certainly, but not this . . . )

Patriarchy stinks.

[harriettubman]

11:41 PM on 04/23/2010

For Real. I can't imagine being a helpless child and some adults forces himself on me into my undeveloped reproductive organ and for the boys enduring that in the bu tt ucks, my word!!!. I take a child's word about this very, very seriously.

[Two Cents]

09:00 AM on 04/24/2010

:o( ( . . . & "me too," ref. taking children's words v., v. seriously.)

[marignymitch]

04:37 PM on 04/23/2010

As opposed to 'old' boys, HuffPo?

[PlanoBlue]

03:46 PM on 04/23/2010

And our oung men and women are dying over there because...........??

[DirtyNas]

10:08 PM on 04/23/2010

Because we need to help establish a stable, working government. If we pulled out now, Afghanistan remains a "rogue" state which is the perfect breeding ground for terrorism; if we pulled out now, we leave ourselves, its neighboring countries, and the Afghani people vulnerable.

Are you suggesting that we should not care what happens to Afghanistan because of this disgusting subculture? I was shocked at your response. When I saw this documentary, I was thinking what can I do, what can the international community do to eradicate this form of sexual slavery that could have a huge social impacts? Your response seems to suggest we should just turn our back because these people are beyond help (as if pedophilia is unique to Afghanistan). I hope I'm wrong in my interpretation of your comment.

[maritimer]

02:34 PM on 04/24/2010

Using your exact rationale, we should also return to Somalia, Haiti, and every other failed state on the globe to "establish a stable, working government." Read your history- especially the history of US intervention in other countries. Nation building does not work. And that is not what our military is for. We are losing lives and losing treasure attempting what could not be done by anyone else, ever. Not by Alexander the Great, not by Genghis Khan, not by a 600,000 man Soviet army. And we are doing it on borrowed Chinese money.

By the way, since you are thinking what can you do, we have a sexual slavery and exploitation problem right here in the US. If you are concerned then get involved to make the US a better place for women, children, and everyone.