It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
"Some men enjoy playing with dogs, some with women. I enjoy playing with boys," said 44-year-old Allah Daad, a one-time Mujahedin commander in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz
The practice of "bacha baazi", meaning "boy-play", is enjoying a resurgence in the North of Afghanistan where ownership is seen as a status symbol by militia leaders according to Afghan news site, e-Ariana.
While condemned by clerics and human rights groups, authorities are doing little to end it.Dancers, known as "bacha bereesh" or "beardless boys", are under 18, with 14 being the "ideal" age.
Owners or "kaatah" meet at bacha baazi parties in large halls where the boys dance late into the night, before being sexually abused.
It was first reported on in the 19th Century by Sir Captain Richard Burton, who went undercover into the Hindu Kush and discovered the tradition of boy brides amongst the peoples of the region. He also discovered that British officers were using boy brides for their entertainment. His report got him summarily punished by the High Command who were embarrassed by his findings.
In revenge it is told that Burton held a dinner party and invited his commanding officers to attend. When they did they were treated to boy brides being present. Typical of Burton's rapacious wit and nasty sense of humour when the officers protested that they were scandalized by his use of boy brides, he assured them they were no such thing. He revealed they were in fact monkeys in drag.
Afghan tradition allows girls to access the freedom of boys
By MSTYSLAV CHERNOV and ELENA BECATOROSan hour ago
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — In a Kabul neighborhood, a gaggle of boys kick a yellow ball around a dusty playground, their boisterous cries echoing off the surrounding apartment buildings.
Dressed in sweaters and jeans or the traditional Afghan male clothing of baggy pants and long shirt, none stand out as they jostle to score a goal. But unbeknown to them, one is different from the others.
At not quite 8 years old, Sanam is a bacha posh: a girl living as a boy. One day a few months ago, the girl with rosy cheeks and an impish smile had her dark hair cut short, donned boys’ clothes and took on a boy’s name, Omid. The move opened up a boy’s world: playing soccer and cricket with boys, wrestling with the neighborhood butcher’s son, working to help the family make ends meet.
In Afghanistan’s heavily patriarchal, male-dominated society, where women and girls are usually relegated to the home, bacha posh, Dari for “dressed as a boy,” is the one tradition allowing girls access to the freer male world.
Sanam, a bacha posh, a girl living as a boy, center, celebrates a goal as she plays soccer with boys from her neighbourhood, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2021. In the heavily patriarchal, male-dominated society of Afghanistan, where women and girls are usually relegated to the home, there is one tradition which allows girls access to the male world: bacha posh. A girl dresses, behaves and is treated as a boy, allowing her to play and to work as a boy would be able to do, until she reaches puberty.
(AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov)
Under the practice, a girl dresses, behaves and is treated as a boy, with all the freedoms and obligations that entails. The child can play sports, attend a madrassa, or religious school, and, sometimes crucially for the family, work. But there is a time limit: Once a bacha posh reaches puberty, she is expected to revert to traditional girls’ gender roles. The transition is not always easy.
It is unclear how the practice is viewed by Afghanistan’s new rulers, the Taliban, who seized power in mid-August and have made no public statements on the issue.
Their rule so far has been less draconian than the last time they were in power in the 1990s, but women’s freedoms have still been severely curtailed. Thousands of women have been barred from working, and girls beyond primary school age have not been able to return to public schools in most places.
With a crackdown on women’s rights, the bacha posh tradition could become even more attractive for some families. And as the practice is temporary, with the children eventually reverting to female roles, the Taliban might not deal with the issue at all, said Thomas Barfield, a professor of anthropology at Boston University who has written several books on Afghanistan. Sanam, a bacha posh, a girl living as a boy, stands next to her father at their street stand selling masks, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2021. In the heavily patriarchal, male-dominated society of Afghanistan, where women and girls are usually relegated to the home, there is one tradition which allows girls access to the male world: bacha posh. A girl dresses, behaves and is treated as a boy, allowing her to play and to work as a boy would be able to do, until she reaches puberty. (AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov)
“Because it’s inside the family and because it’s not a permanent status, the Taliban may stay out (of it),” Barfield said.
It is unclear where the practice originated or how old it is, and it is impossible to know how widespread it might be. A somewhat similar tradition exists in Albania, another deeply patriarchal society, although it is limited to adults. Under Albania’s “sworn virgin” tradition, a woman would take an oath of celibacy and declare herself a man, after which she could inherit property, work and sit on a village council - all of which would have been out of bounds for a woman.
In Afghanistan, the bacha posh tradition is “one of the most under-investigated” topics in terms of gender issues, said Barfield, who spent about two years in the 1970s living with an Afghan nomad family that included a bacha posh. “Precisely because the girls revert back to the female role, they marry, it kind of disappears.”
Girls chosen as bacha posh usually are the more boisterous, self-assured daughters. “The role fits so well that sometimes even outside the family, people are not aware that it exists,” he said.
“It’s almost so invisible that it’s one of the few gender issues that doesn’t show up as a political or social question,” Barfield noted. Sanam, not quite 8 years old, gets a boy's haircut, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, Dec. 17, 2021. In the heavily patriarchal, male-dominated society of Afghanistan, where women and girls are usually relegated to the home, there is one tradition which allows girls access to the male world: Bacha posh. A girl dresses, behaves and is treated as a boy, allowing her to play and to work as a boy would be able to do, until she reaches puberty. (AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov)
The reasons parents might want a bacha posh vary. With sons traditionally valued more than daughters, the practice usually occurs in families without a boy. Some consider it a status symbol, and some believe it will bring good luck for the next child to be born a boy.
But for others, like Sanam’s family, the choice was one of necessity. Last year, with Afghanistan’s economy collapsing, construction work dried up. Sanam’s father, already suffering from a back injury, lost his job as a plumber. He turned to selling coronavirus masks on the streets, making the equivalent of $1-$2 per day. But he needed a helper.
The family has four daughters and one son, but their 11-year-old boy doesn’t have full use of his hands following an injury. So the parents said they decided to make Sanam a bacha posh.
“We had to do this because of poverty,” said Sanam’s mother, Fahima. “We don’t have a son to work for us, and her father doesn’t have anyone to help him. So I will consider her my son until she becomes a teenager.”
A photo of Najieh dressed as a boy at a young age lies in a grass, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Dec. 19, 2021. In the heavily patriarchal, male-dominated society of Afghanistan, where women and girls are usually relegated to the home, there is one tradition which allows girls access to the male world: bacha posh. A girl dresses, behaves and is treated as a boy, allowing her to play and to work as a boy would be able to do, until she reaches puberty. (AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov)
Still, Fahima refers to Sanam as “my daughter.” In their native Dari language, the pronouns are not an issue since one pronoun is used for “he” and “she.”
Sanam says she prefers living as a boy.
“It’s better to be a boy...I wear (Afghan male clothes), jeans and jackets, and go with my father and work,” she said. She likes playing in the park with her brother’s friends and playing cricket and soccer.
Once she grows up, Sanam said, she wants to be either a doctor, a commander or a soldier, or work with her father. And she’ll go back to being a girl.
“When I grow up, I will let my hair grow and will wear girl’s clothes,” she said.
The transition isn’t always easy.
Najieh, who grew up as a bacha posh, sits at her house during an interview, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Oct. 1, 2021. In the heavily patriarchal, male-dominated society of Afghanistan, where women and girls are usually relegated to the home, there is one tradition which allows girls access to the male world: bacha posh. A girl dresses, behaves and is treated as a boy, allowing her to play and to work as a boy would be able to do, until she reaches puberty. (AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov)
“When I put on girls’ clothes, I thought I was in prison,” said Najieh, who grew up as a bacha posh, although she would attend school as a girl. One of seven sisters, her boy’s name was Assadollah.
Now 34, married and with four children of her own, she weeps for the freedom of the male world she has lost.
“In Afghanistan, boys are more valuable,” she said. “There is no oppression for them, and no limits. But being a girl is different. She gets forced to get married at a young age.”
Young women can’t leave the house or allow strangers to see their face, Najieh said. And after the Taliban takeover, she lost her job as a schoolteacher because she had been teaching boys.
“Being a man is better than being a woman,” she said, wiping tears from her eye. “It is very hard for me. ... If I were a man, I could be a teacher in a school.”
“I wish I could be a man, not a woman. To stop this suffering.”
Video: In Afghanistan's heavily patriarchal, male-dominated society, where women and girls are usually relegated to the home, bacha posh, Dari for "dressed as a boy," is the one tradition allowing girls access to the freer male world. (AP Video/Mstyslav Chernov)
Using national data between 1993 and 2021, researchers observed that India’s national prevalence of child marriage—defined by the study as marriage before age 18—declined throughout the study period.
The decade between 2006 and 2016 saw the largest magnitude of reduction in child marriage, while the years between 2016 and 2021 saw the smallest. During these latter years, six Indian states/union territories saw increases in the prevalence of girl child marriage and eight saw increases in boy child marriage.
The study is among the first to examine how the prevalence of child marriage has changed over time at a state/union territory level.
Boston, MA—Child marriage has declined in India—but across the country, one in five girls and nearly one in six boys are still married as children, and in recent years the practice has become more prevalent in some states/union territories, according to a new study led by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Child marriage is a human rights violation and a recognized form of gender- and sexual-based violence. India’s success in reaching zero child marriage is critical to achieving United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 5.3.
The study will be published on December 15, 2023, in The Lancet Global Health.
“This study is among the first to estimate how rates of girl and boy child marriage have changed over time at a state/union territory level. Boy child marriage in particular is often overlooked; to date, there’s been almost no research estimating its prevalence,” said lead author S. V. Subramanian, professor of population health and geography. “Our findings offer a big step forward in understanding the burden of child marriage in India—one that will be critical to effective policymaking.”
Though India legally defines child marriage as marriage before age 18 for girls and before age 21 for boys, for the purposes of the study the researchers defined it as marriage before age 18 for both sexes. Using data from all five waves of India’s National Family Health Survey, from 1993, 1999, 2006, 2016, and 2021, they estimated the number of men and women ages 20-24 who met that definition across state/union territories.
The study found that between 1993 and 2021, child marriage declined nationally. The prevalence of girl child marriage decreased from 49% in 1993 to 22% in 2021, while boy child marriage decreased from 7% in 2006 to 2% in 2021. (Using the Indian legal definition of boy child marriage, the prevalence was much higher: 29% in 2006 and 15% in 2022.) However, progress towards stopping the practice of child marriage has stalled in recent years: The largest reductions in child marriage prevalence occurred between 2006 and 2016, with the lowest magnitude of reduction occurring between 2016 and 2021. In fact, during these later years, six states/union territories (including Manipur, Punjab, Tripura, and West Bengal) saw an increase in girl child marriage and eight (including Chhattisgarh, Goa, Manipur, and Punjab) saw an increase in boy child marriage.
By 2021, the researchers counted more than 13.4 million women and more than 1.4 million men ages 20-24 who were married as children. The results showed that one in five girls and nearly one in six boys are still married below India’s legal age of marriage.
“Child marriage is a human rights violation,” said first author Jewel Gausman, research associate in the Department of Global Health and Population. “It is both a cause and a consequence of social and economic vulnerability that leads to a range of poor health outcomes. The state/union territory stagnation in reaching zero child marriage that we observed is a significant concern—and is a call for India to reignite progress.”
Rockli Kim, visiting scientist at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, was also a co-author.
Funding for the study came from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (INV-002992).
“Prevalence of Girl and Boy Child Marriage: A Repeated Cross-sectional Study Examining the Subnational Variation across States and Union Territories in India, 1993-2021,” Jewel Gausman, Rockli Kim, Akhil Kumar, Shamika Ravi, S.V. Subramanian, The Lancet Global Health, December 15, 2023, doi: 10.1016/S2214-109X(23)00470-9
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health brings together dedicated experts from many disciplines to educate new generations of global health leaders and produce powerful ideas that improve the lives and health of people everywhere. As a community of leading scientists, educators, and students, we work together to take innovative ideas from the laboratory to people’s lives—not only making scientific breakthroughs, but also working to change individual behaviors, public policies, and health care practices. Each year, more than 400 faculty members at Harvard Chan School teach 1,000-plus full-time students from around the world and train thousands more through online and executive education courses. Founded in 1913 as the Harvard-MIT School of Health Officers, the School is recognized as America’s oldest professional training program in public health.
Prevalence of Girl and Boy Child Marriage: A Repeated Cross-sectional Study Examining the Subnational Variation across States and Union Territories in India, 1993-2021
Tradition of Afghan girls who live as boys may be threatened
Analysis by Lisa Selin Davis 1 hour ago The last time the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, after the Soviet--Afghan War of the 1980s, life for women and girls was ghastly.
As a report from the Congressional Research Service put it, "Taliban prohibited women from working, attending school after age 8, and appearing in public without a male blood relative and without wearing a burqa. Women accused of breaking these or other restrictions suffered severe corporal or capital punishment, often publicly."
Afghanistan routinely edges toward tops lists of the worst places in the world for women and girls, but some things had improved after the United States invaded in 2001. The maternal mortality rate decreased (though it is still alarmingly high). More women held jobs like doctors, politicians and journalists. And more girls were educated: The World Bank showed almost no girls receiving a primary education in 2000, but more than 85% going to school by 2012. Some even got to be on a robotics team.
Even so, a 2018 UNICEF report said 1 in 3 Afghan girls is married before age 18. Only 19% of girls under 15 are literate. And 60% of the 3.7 million children out of school that year were girls — for whom going to school has always been dangerous.
For some girls, there has historically been a path to live, before puberty, as a boy. "Bacha posh," which in Dari means girl "dressed up as a boy," is an ancient tradition that pre-dates the Taliban in which a family designates a girl to live as a boy. That could either allow her a boy's freedoms — like education, athletics and the right to be outside alone — or impose a boy's duties on her, like working.
Some parents designate a bacha posh if the family has no sons, to alleviate what a family might consider its shame and vulnerability — not having a male child to protect the family or make money for it — with the hope that the shift will cause the next baby born to be a boy. The girls are expected to return at puberty, to become wives and mothers, whether they want to or not -- and many don't, according to Jenny Nordberg, author of a book about the bacha posh, "The Underground Girls of Kabul."
It is, argues Nordberg, a tradition rooted in inequality. Yet it is one of the only ways some girls get even a taste of freedom — a practice that will be much riskier, but at the same time perhaps even more relevant, she says, as we are already seeing women facing discrimination when the Taliban promised they wouldn't.
CNN asked Nordberg what may lie ahead for girls in Afghanistan, including the bacha posh.
This conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
CNN: What was the situation for girls in Afghanistan before the United States invaded in 2001?
Jenny Nordberg: Most of them did not go to school. They were illiterate. There were some secret girls' schools, which basically meant a makeshift study group. Women or older sisters who may have had some education under the Russians would teach their younger sisters or younger children. They would say that they would teach the Quran, and then they would actually try to teach other stuff like math or language.
A girl was a weakness to the family because she couldn't defend a family as a boy could. Growing up as a little girl meant that you were groomed for one thing only: to be married off to another family. And in order to be good marriage material, their movements were very limited. Little girls shouldn't play too much. They shouldn't be out much. They should definitely not read a book, not play sports, not be too loud. Be very demure, very, very quiet, always lowering their gaze. Even very liberal, educated, progressive parents didn't want their girls to be abducted by the Taliban or to face any danger. This was a way to protect them.
Once a girl begins to menstruate, when she can conceive and get pregnant, she is married off and becomes the property no longer of her father but of the husband. And this could be a man whom she hasn't met or whom she has only met once and never spoken to.
CNN: How had things changed in the 20 years that Americans were in Afghanistan?
Nordberg: There has been a new mostly urban generation, in big city centers like Kabul, a whole generation who went to school and university. They had big plans for themselves, both men and women. They have smartphones. They know what's going on in the rest of the world. These are the ones who, in the fantasy of a new functioning democracy of Afghanistan, were going to take over the state and push the country forward.
Americans were trying to cultivate the most ambitious, the most talented, the most spirited people to run their own country. Which is sort of like a colonialist fantasy.
CNN: The Taliban have said that they will protect women's rights "within the limits of Islam." Does that give you hope?
Nordberg: That statement means nothing because that will be subject to interpretation. There is zero correlation between what we think are reasonable rights for women, and what they think are reasonable rights for women. Oppressing women is not some side story. It's the main story. It's part of the recruitment strategy. Women are only useful for having children. And women need to be controlled and kept very, very small, very diminished.
A woman who gets an education gets a lot of ideas. Maybe she wants to make some of her own decisions about her own body or whether or when she should have children, whether she should get married. They want none of that. They want to hold all the power over women.
Look at the last few days. Why would people be so desperate to get out if they believed the Taliban were a softer version of themselves? Why would women go into hiding, scared for their lives, if they thought that there was any chance that there was some kind of negotiation or a conversation with the Taliban about human rights for women? Short of another invasion, who is going to hold them to that? The Taliban have now taken over in such a swift and brutal and devastating way. They have no reason to compromise. Why would they want to compromise on anything?
Their credibility, in my view, is zero for actually granting women and girls basic human rights.
CNN: What's going to happen to the women who have been educated and were promised a better future?
Nordberg: Women who are useful in one way or another will be allowed to keep working, but they will have no rights of their own. A female surgeon is under the spell of her husband or her father. And she will need to obey a Taliban society and Taliban rules. They'll parade around some women for a few weeks to say, "Oh, look, we're completely fine and normal. We got this. Don't worry." And then when the eyes of the world have moved away, they'll crack down hard. But they'll keep a few token women to show off as public figures. The rest will be completely brutalized. (As CNN recently reported, "As Taliban leaders tell international media they 'don't want women to be victimized,' a more sinister reality is unfolding on the ground. Girls are being forced into marriage, female bank workers marched from their jobs, and activists' homes raided in a clear message that the freedoms of the last 20 years are coming to an end.")
CNN: Who are the bacha posh?
Nordberg: A bacha posh is a girl who lives as a boy, almost like a third gender. In order to reach for what we think of as some very basic human rights, a girl can put on a pair of pants and a shirt and cut her hair off and pass as a boy. This will increase her range of movement. She doesn't need to be kept indoors. She could play sports. She could escort her mother or do errands. She'll see more of the world outside the house, essentially. And in areas where education is only afforded to boys, she could get an education and could also safely get to school, if it's dangerous for a girl to travel or to walk to school.
It's an ancient tradition and custom that is a sign basically of a deeply dysfunctional, segregated society where women and girls are second-class citizens. If girls had rights, there would be no need to pretend to be the more privileged gender. This is a society where boys and men have almost all the rights. In an extremely segregated society, there will always be those who try to get over to the other side.
CNN: Why do some girls become bacha posh?
Nordberg: It can be done for a number of reasons. If the family doesn't have a boy, it is not just perceived as weak but is actually weak, because there will be no one to defend the family and support aging parents. It could be that people know that you have a bacha posh instead of an actual son, but it's still considered better than to have just daughters. It's viewed favorably by most Afghans.
It could also be that if the family is poor, you will have a bacha posh as labor, working for the family business or working outside the home as a shop assistant, bringing some money in if the father can't work or if the mother is widowed.
It could also be that the parents really want a girl to get an education. If you have two sons and a daughter and then you dress the girl just like the boys, and you send all three of them to school.
CNN: Is it liberating for the girls who are living as bacha posh?
Nordberg: It depends. Is it a burden? Is it so that you can work and bring home money to the family? Or is it a privilege where you're afforded an education or some freedom of movement or you can ride a bike or travel with your father? It can be either or it can be both. It's very complicated psychologically for each individual bacha posh. And it mostly depends on two factors. What was the reason for your being a bacha posh, and how long did it go on for?
CNN: Will it still be allowed under Taliban rule?
Nordberg: This existed in Afghanistan long, long before the Taliban came to power, and it will exist until the day women have their own human rights. That said, there will be a greater need to hide, a greater need to disguise yourself if you want to do certain things. But it will also be more dangerous to do it, because I believe the Taliban do not approve of this. It was always risky and it will be more dangerous under a harsher regime. It will be making a mockery of the Taliban and their view on women.
CNN: What are our moral obligations to the girls and women of Afghanistan?
Nordberg: I hesitate to even use the term "moral obligation." Can we even talk about that anymore? In my opinion, we just needed to get as many people as possible out. What was done wasn't enough, by far. Every ambassador, any country that was involved in this failure of a generation, should have issued emergency visas and opened their borders to the people who we have put in incredible danger by promoting and cultivating and encouraging and educating them. These are our people. and we are part of that country now, as they are part of us.
We encouraged these women to get an education, get a profession, choose your own path, become more like us, build your own country. And those are the ones who are now in extreme danger. These are the journalists, academics, teachers, university students, artists, politicians. The airlifts are now over, but other, more underground efforts, will continue
Get them out and get them out now because the gate is closing on something that will be a horrible, horrible country for women for many years to come.
China wants to be a country of macho men, and it’s trying to make that happen by banning “sissy” boybands and “effeminate” males from all media in the nation.
Broadcasters must “resolutely put an end to sissy men and other abnormal esthetics,” the National Radio and TV Administration wrote in a new set of rules released Thursday. It also used the term “niang pao," an insult for effeminate men that means “girlie guns.”
The new rules call for broadcasters to enforce a "correct beauty standard" and to boycott "vulgar" internet celebrities and celebrations of wealth, while promoting "traditional Chinese culture, revolutionary culture and socialist culture." They also ban all "idol audition shows" and recommend blacklisting anyone who has broken the law or offended public morals.
Additionally, the rules say that broadcasters should avoid airing anything that is "overly entertaining."
The Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda department announced the new media masculinity rules on Thursday, in its latest effort to police morality through censorship.
President Xi Jinping has essentially pledged to Make China Great Again with a “national rejuvenation,” which he is trying to pull off through strict control of all business, education, culture and religion in the country.
The CCP has racked up a long list of censorship and human rights abuses in recent years, from the persecution of ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang, to the complete denial of the 1984 massacre at Tiananmen Square, to new rules that ban certain karaoke songs or limit children from playing more than three hours of online video games a week.
Even Winnie the Pooh has been banned, after the character was once used to mock Xi.
China has also targeted its own celebrities who it deems to have stepped out of line. Actors Fan Bingbing and Zheng Shuang have been handed steep fines in the past, and the wildly popular actor Zhao Wei was recently erased from all Chinese media without explanation. Actor Zhang Zhehan was also wiped off the Chinese internet after photos surfaced of him at a controversial shrine for Japanese soldiers.
The new media rules could have a major impact beyond China’s borders, particularly in Hollywood, where studios in the past have kowtowed to Chinese demands in order to show their films in the lucrative market.
Tech companies are also facing pressure under the propaganda department's new rules, as they are being held responsible for enforcement.
Weibo, China's version of Twitter, suspended thousands of entertainment news and fan club accounts over the weekend amid the broader crackdown.
It's unclear how the rules will impact the LGBTQ2 community within China, or how they might affect foreign athletes when they go to Beijing for the 2022 Winter Olympics next February.
And apparently the bodyguards were responsible for as many deaths as the suicide bomber.
Men and boys were enjoying picnics or watching dog and cock fights when the blast happened. Six children and thirteen auxiliary policemen were among the dead. Many of the wounded were critically injured and the death toll was expected to rise. Witnesses claimed panicking bodyguards fired wildly after the explosion, hitting dazed survivors.
"In my mind there were no Taliban to attack after the blast but the bodyguards were shooting anyway," he said.
And let's remember that in North America dog fighting is illegal and will get you kicked out of the NFL and put in jail. But in Kandahar, well it's a 'tradition', gee just like Burka's and boy brides.. Still haven't got rid of those either in liberated Afghanistan.
Ironically , like opium production, dog fighting was banned by the nasty Taleban.
Dog-fighting competitions, which were banned under the Taleban regime, are a popular pastime in Afghanistan.
Can you say medieval patriarchal society? The enemies of my enemy may not be any better....
Afghanistan: LGBTQ people fear for their lives under Taliban rule
Less than a month after they returned to power, the Taliban have begun going after LGBTQ people in Afghanistan. Members of this group reflect on their fears and the brief moments of freedom they used to have.
The LGBTQ community in Afghanistan has always lived a secret life because homosexuality is considered immoral and un-Islamic in the country
On the afternoon of August 26, 20-year-old college student Rabia Balhki (name changed to protect her identity) was pushing her way through the crowd outside the Kabul airport. Nearby, Taliban fighters occasionally fired warning shots into the air while beating people with sticks.
In panic, people fled in all directions, making it even more difficult for Rabia to access the airport. But she remained undeterred. Rabia told DW that she was desperate to flee Afghanistan as she was a woman and also a lesbian.
For the Islamic fundamentalist group, the LGBTQ community's presence is not acceptable.
After overcoming all the difficulties, Rabia finally reached the airport entrance, but the Taliban officer who was guarding the gate refused to let her through. She had no choice but to turn back and leave. An hour later, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive in the crowd and one of Rabia's relatives died on the spot.
Rabia is glad to have escaped the attack, but she doesn't know if she will survive the Taliban's hunt for LGBTQ people. "The Taliban think we are like the waste in society," she said. "They want to eliminate us."
No space for the LGBTQ community
The LGBTQ community in Afghanistan has always lived a secret life, since homosexuality is considered immoral and un-Islamic in the country.
If convicted of engaging in gay or lesbian sex, a person can be imprisoned for life under the nation's 2017 penal code, and under Sharia — Islamic law — even the death penalty is technically allowed.
According to the LGBTQ advocacy group ILGA-World, successive Afghan governments have not enforced the death penalty for gay sex since 2001, but the Taliban might deal with the issue differently.
In an interview with the German newspaper Bild in July, Gul Rahim, a Taliban judge in a province in central Afghanistan, said: "For homosexuals, there can only be two punishments: either stoning, or he must stand behind a wall that will fall down on him. The wall must be 2.5 to 3 meters (8 to 10 feet) high."
LGBTQ people face life threats
A few days after the Taliban entered Kabul, a 25-year-old gay man, Faraz (name changed to protect the identity), learned about the death of a gay friend. He isn't sure which penalty his friend received. All he knows is that the Taliban are serious about going after gay people and he might face the same fate.
"He was caught by the Taliban through complaints filed by others. The Taliban took him somewhere, killed him, and then brought his body back to his family," Faraz told DW.
"There is a specific group within the Taliban that searches for gay people," Faraz said. "They go from street to street, and when they find out who is gay, they don't hesitate to kill them."
Afghan-American LGBTQ activist Nemat Sadat told DW that in the first two weeks after the Taliban takeover, he received 357 messages from members of the Afghan LGBTQ community, but only one of them had managed to leave the country. She was able to leave for Spain.
Sadat compiled a list of LGBTQ individuals and submitted it to the US State Department, but since the US had ended its evacuation mission on August 31, the plan to evacuate LGBTQ people has become more difficult to execute. "It's going to be a long fight," Sadat said. "It's going to be a multi-year project."
But Sadat is not sure how much time his fellow Afghan LGBTQ brothers and sisters still have.
"The Taliban said they can grant amnesty to journalists and people who have helped Western governments and allow women to continue their education. People are still suspicious of them, but at least they gave a promise," Sadat said. "But for the LGBTQ community, the Taliban didn't even bother to pretend to give a promise." Raising awareness about homosexuality
Born in Afghanistan in 1979, Sadat moved overseas with his family when he was 8 months old and eventually settled in the US. In 2012, he returned to Afghanistan to teach at an American school as an assistant professor and began raising awareness about LGBTQ issues.
"There was hardly any LGBTQ-related discussion at the time. I arranged debates in class, asking students to speak for and against the LGBTQ community," Sadat said.
Sometimes he would work with international organizations and do presentations on LGBTQ topics.
"We were careful not to leave any document," Sadat said. But even so, he still received a backlash from the then-Afghan government, leading to his dismissal from the job and his return to the US in the summer of 2013.
At the time, he was forced to come out publicly, making him one of Afghanistan's first openly gay activists.
After that, Sadat began to receive letters from LGBTQ people in Afghanistan. This way he discovered that even though the local LGBTQ community was repressed, it still played a key role in driving social progress on various fronts.
Low-key LGBTQ scene in Kabul
Over the past two decades, Afghanistan made some progress in accepting LGBTQ people, say rights activists. They managed to enter professions in mass media, helped produce talk shows and arranged youth education programs dedicated to sensitive topics, among other things.
"People say Afghanistan didn't change, but I disagree with that," Sadat said. "These LGBTQ people have put efforts into changing Afghan society."
For Faraz, the previous Afghan government was oppressive toward the LGBTQ community, but if they were caught by the police, they were at best jailed or fined. This resulted in creating some space for a low-key LGBTQ scene in Kabul.
"There are still some places for gay men to meet in the city, and I also use dating apps to meet people," Faraz told DW.
But he says he is wary of using those apps now, because he's afraid that the Taliban will use different tricks to lure gay men in. He pointed to instances when the Taliban had approached gay people through social media by posing as journalists.
Isolated and depressed at home
Faraz also said that many gay people have now turned off their cell phone location, fearing that the Taliban could track them through their mobile phones. LGBTQ people have also stopped meeting others who know about their sexual identity.
"I don't have much connection with others. I don't have people to complain with," Faraz said.
Rabia, the lesbian woman, has left her house only twice in the past three weeks: one time to the airport and the other time to the bank to withdraw money.
She's afraid of running into members of the Taliban on the street. She's also scared that if they learn about her sexual identity, they'll come after her.
"It's so boring at home. I tried to read some books so that I don't feel depressed," Rabia said.
AFGHANI LGBTQ DREAM
Thursday, February 12, 2026
The US Military Aided Mass Child Rape in Afghanistan. Now Its Soldiers Are Committing This Crime at Fort Bragg
An embedded civilian journalist taking photographs of US soldiers in Pana, Afghanistan.
There is an epidemic of child sex crimes in and around Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Since 2021, and the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, dozens of elite soldiers stationed at the military base have been convicted of raping children, distributing child pornography, and other similar offenses.
Many of these soldiers served in Afghanistan, where it is now acknowledged that the U.S. military aided their local allies in “bacha bazi” (boy play): the practice of kidnapping and keeping boys as sex slaves, large numbers of whom were enslaved on U.S. military compounds.
MintPress News explores this dark and deeply disturbing topic.
Unspeakable Crimes
In August 2023, Joshua Glardon – a first sergeant in the 4th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne) at Fort Bragg – was sentenced to 76 years in prison, followed by lifetime supervised released, for the distribution of child pornography across the internet. An unnamed woman – his accomplice – was sentenced to 30 years in prison after she “confessed to allowing him to rape” her child.
Just two weeks later, Major Vincent Ramos was arrested at North Carolina’s Raleigh-Durham International Airport on one count of statutory rape of a child younger than 15, seven counts of statutory sex offense with a child younger than 15, and two counts of indecent liberties with a child. A logistics officer based at Fort Bragg, he was later charged with two more counts of indecent liberties with a child.
And one month after that, in October 2023, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Stuart P. Kelly of the 82nd Airborne Division was sentenced to 16 years in prison and a dishonorable discharge after pleading guilty to raping and abusing a child under the age of 12. Kelly had made the child touch him and perform oral sex on camera.
Meanwhile, Staff Sergeant Carlos Castro Callejas was handed a 55-year jail term, a dishonorable discharge, and a demotion to the rank of private, after facing 13 charges of rape of a child under 12 years old.
All four of these men were not only based at Fort Bragg, but have served lengthy tours in Afghanistan. But they are merely the tipofashockinglylargeicebergofdozens of individuals from Fort Bragg who have been arrested on crimes related to abusing and trafficking minors.
According to investigative journalist Seth Harp, who uncovered a massive narcotics smuggling and distribution network run by elite military operators at the base in his book, “The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces,” there has been a tenfold increase in such cases since 2021 and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. But even more chilling is the choice of victims for these sexual predators; “I have not heard in years about one case of these special forces guys raping a woman. In the same time, I’ve heard about 15 cases of them raping children,” he told Abby Martin and Mike Prysner on the Empire Files podcast.
All this raises a plethora of serious questions about what is going on at the base, and what sort of dark and chilling secrets are being kept there.
“Laughing Off” Child Sexual Assault
A sprawling, city-sized base on the outskirts of Fayetteville, North Carolina, Fort Bragg is home to some 50,000 military personnel, making it one of the largest military installations anywhere in the world. It is home to many of the U.S.’ most elite organizations, including JSOC, Delta Force, the 3rd Special Forces Group, and the 82nd Airborne Division.
It also lies minutes away from I-95, the primary north-south interstate route on the American Eastern Seaboard. I-95 stretches from Miami in the south to the Canada/Maine border in the north, making it a crucial transport highway. Fayetteville is near its halfway mark. “It is a natural point, almost like a city that grew up upon the Silk Road in ancient times,” Anthony Aguilar told MintPress News, “It is a matter of fact that throughout this part of North Carolina, along the 95 corridor, there are vast amounts of sex trafficking and human trafficking in these areas. It is because of the accessible route from border to border that these things are trafficked or smuggled.” Anthony Aguilar is a former United States Army Lieutenant Colonel, Special Forces Green Beret, and a former Battalion Commander at Fort Bragg. In 2025, he became a whistleblower, revealing serious misconduct about U.S.- and Israeli-backed operations in Gaza.
He alleged that other commanders at Fort Bragg are well aware of the epidemic of child sex crimes, but “laugh about it or brush it off,” stating:
“Military leadership at the highest ranks are aware of what is happening, and they choose to cover it up. Not ignore it; they don’t ignore it. They acknowledge it. They choose to cover it up, because nobody wants to look like their unit is a bad and undisciplined unit. Nobody wants to look like troublemakers.”
Aguilar shared with MintPress an example of this from was when he was a commander of the 18th Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg. A warrant officer was accused multiple times of sexually assaulting and abusing his stepdaughter – a minor – and producing pornography of these events. His chain of command decided not to do anything about it, but simply transfer him to Aguilar’s unit.
“He came to ours, and he did it again. My position on it was: court-martial, grand jury hearing, criminal case, criminal prosecution before a military judge,” he said. However, he was unable to carry this out as, “a three-star general circumvented my authority to charge him, and took that court-martial case up to his level, and then recanted those charges, and simply offered him a deal: ‘get out the Army and we won’t charge you criminally.’” The warrant officer took the deal, was discharged, and faced no criminal charges. Clearly disturbed by the event, Aguilar noted:
“That is why this continues to happen. That is why this is part of the culture. That is why these things continue to grow. It is because commanders at the highest level continue to hide it. They lie about it. And they do not hold those who do it accountable, in fear that it makes them look bad as a commander.”
“Women Are For Children, Boys Are For Pleasure”
Many American soldiers and operators encountered a similarly widespread practice of child sexual assault in Afghanistan – and found a correspondingly permissive attitude from U.S. officials and military top brass.
The practice is called bacha bazi, a process by which men exploit and enslave adolescent boys, coercing them into cross-dressing, wearing makeup, dancing suggestively, and acting as sex slaves. The bachas (boys) are generally aged between nine and fifteen years old, and inordinately come from impoverished or vulnerable backgrounds. Many grew up in orphanages, are street children, or have been sold into slavery by relatives facing starvation. Others are simply abducted. Bacha Bazes (boy players) are typically older, wealthier men who consider the ownership of one or more young boys to be a status symbol, often giving them money and expensive clothing. In Afghanistan’s strictly gender segregated society, a common saying is that “women are for having children, boys are for pleasure.”
The United Nations has condemned bacha bazi. “It is time to openly confront this practice and to put an end to it,” Radhika Coomaraswamy, then Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, told the U.N. General Assembly in 2009. “Laws should be passed, campaigns must be waged and perpetrators should be held accountable and punished,” she added.
Although it had been known for centuries, occurrences in Afghanistan exploded in the 1980s with the ascendancy of the U.S.-backed Mujahideen government. It was briefly quashed under the Taliban (1996-2001), but returned again in the 21st century under the U.S.-protected Afghan government, made up of many of the same elements who were in power two decades previously.
How Washington Participated In Mass Child Sexual Slavery
The United States government actively tried to ignore the practice – an open secret in military and diplomatic circles. However, as it was withdrawing from the country, the State Department belatedly released a report admitting that, for nearly 20 years of occupation, there existed, “a government pattern of sexual slavery on government compounds.” U.S.-trained and funded authorities, it noted, “continued to arrest, detain, penalize, and abuse many trafficking victims, including punishing sex trafficking victims for ‘moral crimes’ and sexually assaulting victims who attempted to report trafficking crimes to law enforcement officials.” NGOs who helped the children, the report noted, advised them not to go to the police, as they were often the ones responsible for enslaving them in the first place.
Bacha bazi was primarily practiced by high-status individuals put in power by U.S. occupation forces – police, military, teachers, and government officials. Many of these people lived with their boys on U.S. compounds. This meant that, in practice, the U.S. taxpayer was subsidizing the widespread rape of children, one of the many reasons that American personnel were so unpopular with the local population, and why the U.S.-installed government fell within days of the 2021 military pullout. As Harp stated:
“The whole time that the U.S. was in Afghanistan, they were working with, protecting, funding, and arming guys who were systematically raping little boys, keeping them in chains on U.S. military bases – chained children on U.S. bases who were raped on a nightly basis! What can we even make of this? I struggle to wrap my mind around not only the evil of it, but how little anybody ever said about it.”
One example of the levels of depravity of the U.S.’ allies comes from Jordan Terrell, a former Fort Bragg paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne. At Forward Operating Base Shank in Logar Province in 2014, Terrell recalls seeing a group of young bachas running around the base. One, he noticed, “had something hanging out of his butt.” At first confused by the site, he later realized that what he saw was the child’s prolapsed anus from being repeatedly sodomized. “Dudes were exposed to that stuff so much,” he said, “The Afghan National Army, Afghan police… The contractors who cooked our food. Those guys raped children.”
Officially, Washington saw nothing. On 5,753 occasions between 2010 and 2016, the U.S. military was asked to review Afghan units to see if there were any gross human rights abuses noted. American law requires military aid to be cut off from any offending unit. On zero occasions did they report any abuses.
Yet bacha bazi was so widespread that virtually all U.S. personnel had heard about it. Aguilar stated that soldiers were relieved to make it to Friday every week, joking that: “It’s man-boy love Friday, so we are not going to get attacked very much today, because they are all having sex with their young boy concubines.”
The practice was as open as it was widespread. In 2016, an Afghan police commander invited a Washington Post journalist to his office for tea, where he gleefully showed off what he called his “beautiful boy slave.” The Afghan police were just one of a myriad of organizations the U.S. government sponsored during its 20-year, $2 trillion occupation of the country.
“I heard of it a number of times from both U.S. military and State Department officers throughout Afghanistan and in D.C., usually off-hand, with an exasperated what are you going to do type affect to their comments,” Matthew Hoh, a former U.S. Marine Corps Captain and State Department official told MintPress News, adding:
“It was clear that such crimes were not to be intruded upon. I doubt there was official paperwork to that effect, but it was clearly understood that we were to accept the rape of children as part of the bargain in our relationship with the Afghans we had put and kept in power.”
In 2009, after growing increasingly disillusioned with the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, Hoh resigned from his position at the State Department in Zabul Province.
Other Americans who tried to blow the whistle on the disturbing practice (and American complicity in it) ended up dead. One was Lance Corporal Gregory Buckley Jr., who was kept up at night by the shrieks of children being raped by Afghan police in rooms beside him at Forward Operating Base Delhi in Helmand Province.
Via a phone call, Buckley told his father that, from his bunk, “we can hear them screaming, but we’re not allowed to do anything about it.” His officers told him to “look the other way” because “it’s their culture.” It would be the last time his father heard Buckley’s voice, as he was murdered on the base days later by the very locals he was trying to train and protect.
Others who have taken matters into their own hands have had their careers destroyed by the military. Green Berets Captain Dan Quinn and Sergeant First Class Charles Martland found out that a local police commander in Kunduz Province had kidnapped a boy and was keeping him chained to the bed as a sex slave. After learning that she had turned to the Americans for help, the commander also beat up the boy’s mother. Quinn and Martland confronted him, but he laughed it off, telling them “it was only a boy,” after all. Incensed, the pair threw him to the floor, punched and kicked him.
Quinn was relieved of his command and sent back to the United States, where he left the military. Martland was originally going to be expelled from the Army, but, after a public backlash, he was quietly reinstated.
Drug Abuse, Child Abuse
The prevalence of Bacha bazi closely mirrors that of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. The practice was far less common in the 1970s and 1980s, under the U.S.S.R.-backed, secular, Communist government. In an effort to overthrow the regime and bleed the Soviets dry, Washington spent $2 billion funding, training, and arming local Mujahideen militias (including Osama bin Laden). The Mujahideen seized control of Afghanistan in 1992, not long after the demise of the Soviet Union.
Presented as brave and gallant freedom fighters, the Mujahideen were lauded in the West. But, as in Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, and much of the rest of the world, the U.S. so often allies itself with deeply unsavory movements in order to achieve its ends.
Not only were the Mujahideen religious reactionaries, but they displayed a conspicuous penchant for kidnapping and molesting children, and the practice exploded once they attained power.
Although bacha bazi was widely adopted by the Mujahideen, it was never accepted by much of the public, who saw it as barbaric and monstrous. Therefore, despite their depiction as the Afghan equivalent of the Founding Fathers in the Western press, many in Afghanistan saw their new rulers as little more than a gang of U.S.-imposed pedophile warlords.
The Mujahideen would be supplanted in only four years by the Taliban, who rose to power in no small part due to the nationwide revulsion and outrage over bacha bazi. Indeed, Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban until his death in 2013, shot to fame due to his prominent opposition to the practice. In 1994, he led a group of armed men on a series of raids to rescue kidnapped and enslaved boys and girls.
The stunt made him a national hero, and greatly increased the Taliban’s strength and prestige. From a force of just 30 fighters, his militia grew to 12,000 by the year’s end, as thousands joined his cause, paving the way for their march on Kabul in 1996. Upon seizing power, the Taliban outlawed bacha bazi, making it punishable by death. Thus, while the Taliban are hardly known for their human rights policies, they were at least able to gain some public support through their actions to stamp out child rape.
This period, however, proved to be short-lived, as just five years later, in 2001, the United States would invade Afghanistan in order to topple the Taliban, putting in place many of the deposed Mujahideen figures from the previous regime. The return of the U.S.-backed government saw the reemergence of bacha bazi, with many top government, police and military officials flaunting their child concubines. This included even family members of President Hamid Karzai.
Likewise, drug production in Afghanistan directly correlates with U.S. involvement in the country. In the 1970s, heroin production was minimal, and largely for domestic consumption. But as the Western-backed regime change war dragged on, Washington looked for other ways to support the insurgency. They found their answer in opium, and soon, refineries processing locally-grown poppy seeds sprang up on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Trucks loaded with U.S. taxpayer-funded weapons entered Afghanistan from their ally, Pakistan, and returned filled to the brim with opium.
As Professor Alfred McCoy, author of “The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade,” told MintPress,
“What the resistance fighters did was they turned to opium. Afghanistan had about 100 tons of opium produced every year in the 1970s. By 1989-1990, at the end of that 10-year CIA operation, that minimal amount of opium — 100 tons per annum — had turned into a major amount, 2,000 tons a year, and was already about 75% of the world’s illicit opium trade.”
The operation caused a worldwide boom in opium consumption, with heroin addiction more than doubling in the United States alone. The drug became a cultural touchstone, as illustrated in popular movies such as Trainspotting and Requiem for a Dream. By 1999, annual production had risen to 4,600 tons.
Once again, the deeply religious Taliban stepped in to suppress the practice. A 2000 ban on opium cultivation led to a precipitous drop in production, with just 185 tons harvested the following year. Although the prohibition hit local farmers hard, it did begin to combat Afghanistan’s terrible opioid crisis, again gaining the Taliban some legitimacy with the local population.
Like with bacha bazi, though, the U.S. occupation reversed this trend. Under American supervision, opium production skyrocketed, reaching a high of 9,000 tons in 2017. Afghanistan became the world’s first true narco-state, with McCoy noting that by 2008, opium was responsible for well over half of the country’s gross domestic product. By comparison, even in Colombia’s darkest days, cocaine only accounted for around 3% of its GDP. More land in Afghanistan was under cultivation for opium than was used for coca across all of Latin America.
Many of those making fortunes from the business were the U.S.’ closest allies. This again included the Karzai family; the president’s brother, Ahmed Wali, was among the biggest and most notorious drugs kingpins in the region.
Shortly after coming back to power, the Taliban again banned the production of opium, sending teams of men across the country to eradicate poppy fields. In what even Western corporate media called “the most successful counter-narcotics effort in human history,” production fell by over 80% almost overnight, and has only continued to decrease since then. The speed and success of the operation raised serious questions about the United States’ true relationship with the global drug trade.
An Incredibly Lucrative Business
Soldiers at Fort Bragg were closer than anyone else to the unseemly underbelly of the Afghanistan occupation. Units such as JSOC, Delta Force, the 3rd Special Forces Group and the 82nd Airborne Division worked closely with Afghan security forces, and had a front row seat to their activities.
“The Fort Bragg Cartel” uncovers a giant gun and drug trafficking network centered around the base, revealing how soldiers used military planes to sneak arms and narcotics into America, distributing them across the continent. Criminals in the U.S. military, Aguilar notes, have learned a great deal about trafficking and smuggling contraband, stating that:
“When you deploy as a military and you have all of your 90 cubic inch containers that get locked up will all your stuff in it. Those don’t get inspected when they fly back over on a military aircraft and land at Fort Bragg…[They learn] How easy it would be to transport and traffic weapons, drugs, and yes, even humans, back and forth, from country to country. It is all very doable. And it is all very lucrative.”
Military bases are the perfect smuggling operation centers. There is little oversight or inspection, and soldiers can move around the country from base to base, and are less likely to be stopped and searched by the police. A disproportionate amount of those soldiers convicted came from backgrounds in logistics, where they were trusted with transporting large shipments of goods to and from the U.S., all with minimal input or scrutiny from higher ups.
Selling guns and drugs is one thing. But trafficking and raping children is quite another. How could anyone consider engaging in such sickening behavior? And why has the practice exploded around Fort Bragg? For some, the answer was psychological: American troops, taught to dehumanize their enemies and exposed to child abuse on a daily basis come to see it as normal behavior. As Terrell suggested, “In some sick way…when they came back, maybe they just internalized it, and turned it into a sexual proclivity.”
There is, however, a simpler explanation: money. Some Fort Bragg soldiers stationed in Afghanistan and exposed to bacha bazi came back to the United States and see an opportunity to make huge amounts of money trafficking humans, and creating and selling child pornography.
“It is less of a matter of soldiers coming home from Iraq or Afghanistan and having this learned behavior of sexual deviance, child pornography, or abusing children, it is a learned behavior that child pornography and sex trafficking minors is very very profitable,” Aguilar said; “They see that, and they think, ‘This is really lucrative.’”
The Taliban have once again made bacha bazi a capital offense. It is unclear if the new law has suppressed the practice, or merely driven it underground. After all, Afghanistan’s sanction-hit economy means that the economic incentives for destitute families to sell their sons to rich officials are as pressing as ever. Moreover, there are reports that some Taliban commanders allegedly hold bachas themselves.
What is clear, however, is that the tactics and practices used by the United States military abroad are increasingly being used against the domestic population. From surveillance and militarized policing to increasing intolerance of dissent, civil liberties are being eroded by forces using techniques honed on subjects in Western Asia. In November, an Afghan commando and former member of a CIA-trained death squad, carried out a mass shooting in Washington, D.C.
While it is clear that the U.S. invasion destroyed Afghanistan, it also took its tole on America itself. The occupation directly contributed to the opioid crisis at home. And it appears that it is also connected to the epidemic of child sexual abuse documented here, as soldiers abuse children for profit. What has been happening at Fort Bragg, then, is part of the wider psychological degradation of American society, one that is controlled a by a government that has sacrificed everything sacred to protect and advance its imperial ambitions.
