Afghanistan's mujahideen warlords, who fought off the Soviet invasion and instigated a civil war in the 1980s, regularly engaged in acts of pedophilia. Occurring frequently across southern and eastern Afghanistan's rural Pashtun belt and with ethnic Tajiks in the northern Afghan countryside, bacha bazi has become a shockingly common practice. They are expected to engage in sexual acts with much older suitors, often remaining a man's or group's sexual underling for a protracted period. These boys are often made to dress as females, wear makeup, and dance for parties of men. The adolescent boys who are groomed for sexual relationships with older men are bought - or, in some instances, kidnapped - from their families and thrust into a world which strips them of their masculine identity. Whereas rural Pashtun culture remains largely misogynistic and male-dominated due to deeply-ingrained Islamic values, teen-age boys have become the objects of lustful attraction and romance for some of the most powerful men in the Afghan countryside.ĭemeaning and damaging, the widespread subculture of pedophilia in Afghanistan constitutes one of the most egregious ongoing violations of human rights in the world. This phenomenon presents a system of gender reversal in Afghanistan. Perhaps the most deplorable tragedy, one that has actually grown more rampant since 2001, is the practice of bacha bazi - sexual companionship between powerful men and their adolescent boy conscripts. While the Afghan government has been able to address some of these issues since the Taliban's ouster in 2001, archaic social traditions and deep-seated gender norms have kept much of rural Afghanistan in a medieval state of purgatory. Innumerable tragedies have beleaguered rural Afghans throughout the past decades of conflict - perpetual violence, oppression of women, and crushing poverty have all contributed to the Hobbesian nature of life in the Afghan countryside. With the looming withdrawal of NATO troops and a persistent insurgent threat, Afghanistan is in a precarious position.
0 kommentar(er)
