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The documentary film ‘The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan’ explores a variety of practices that involve sexual relations between older men and younger, often adolescent men or boys, otherwise known as ‘Bache’ or children. In Afghanistan, the practice is informally known as ‘Bachabazi’. It is a form of pederasty that has been prevalent in Central Asia for many centuries, and has now been documented in present-day Afghanistan.
A typical bachabazi dance includes a small gathering of grown men, alcohol, hashish, musicians with string instruments, and one or more beardless bachas. The bachas dress in a feminine fashion and dance to the music. This performative aspect of bachabazi belongs to a well-established tradition of public dance by cross-dressing males in Central Asia and the greater Middle Eastern region. It is cognate with customs such as köçek and khawal, which are respectively the Ottoman and Egyptian equivalents.[1]
As a social institution, bachabazi is maintained through patron–client relationships. It is likely that the practices associated with bachabazi have become more coercive and exploitative over time, such that public performance became secondary to the sexual relations formed with the bachas.
Bachabazi in History
In contemporary times, Afghanistan has been subjected as a site of imperial warfare, first by the Soviet Union and then by the United States. As such, representations of Afghan social practices have proliferated in the international media in a uniformly condemnatory fashion. Sexual practices associated with bachabazi have been portrayed as deviant and unusual. Bachabazi has evoked horror and macabre fascination among imperial observers since it was first recorded by colonial ethnographers in the nineteenth century, and continues to do so today.
It is generally believed that bachabazi existed in antiquity. However, what is not clear is whether bachabazi is connected to ancient pedarastic practices in the Occident and how the practices evolved over time. The customs, sexuality, and aesthetic habits of pre-modern Central Asia have not been sufficiently studied by scholars to offer a conclusive picture of bachabazi in the context of antiquity.
One early account of such practices comes from Eugene Schuyler, a nineteenth century American scholar, diplomat, and explorer who travelled extensively through Central Asia. He observed public dance performances by famous ‘bachas’, and wrote: “These batchas, or dancing boys, are a recognised institution throughout the whole of the settled portions of Central Asia, though they are most […] vogue in Bukhara […] and the neighbouring Samarkand.”[2]
Schuyler describes the formalism that imbued the public nature of such dance performances. “If a batcha condescends to offer a man a bowl of tea, the recipient rises to take it with a profound obeisance, and returns the empty bowl in the same way, addressing him only as Taxir, ‘your majesty’ or Kulluk, ‘I am your slave’.”[3] Although Schuyler does not directly comment on the pedarastic aspect of this social institution, he writes, “In all large towns batchas are very numerous, for it is as much the custom of a Bukhariot gentleman to keep one as it was in the Middle Ages for each knight to have his squire. In fact, no establishment of a man of rank or position would be complete without one; and men of small means club together to keep one among them, to amuse them in their hours of rest or recreation.”[4]
At the time, Bacha performers could acquire celebrity status among commoners, and the more astute among them could go on to run small businesses of their own. However, most bachas faced difficult economic circumstances once they grew older.
Another significant ethnographic account of nineteenth century Central Asian customs is the “Report of the Commission of Inspection to the Turkestan Governor Generalship” of 1908-1909. The Commission was led by Senator Count Konstantin Konstantinovich Pahlen of Russia, an imperial visitor to military-ruled Turkistan, and is termed the Pahlen Commission for this reason. This document mentions and records bachabazi, through Count Pahlen’s brief description of a public dance with boys and commissioned photographs of the singing-dancing troupes.[5] Pahlen’s description of the spectacle focused on the dancers’ appearance and the setting of the performance, but did not otherwise engage with or analyze the social context behind the dance.
In 1909, a group of entertainers performed at the Central Asian Agricultural, Industrial and Scientific Exposition in Tashkent. Among them were two boys, 16-year-old Hadji and 10-year-old Sajid. Locally based researchers recorded the lyrics of the songs performed by the two boys, and then published them in the Sirt (Uzbek) language, along with a Russian translation.
The aforementioned historical accounts restrict themselves to describing certain dance performances in an ethnographic style, because bachabazi was not the focus of their research. Neither Eugene Schuyler nor Count Pahlen afforded bachabazi and the attendant sexual practices any significant mention beyond the spectacle of the dance and music itself. This is because the sexual practices of Central Asians, however abhorrent to the observer, could be explained as the “behavior of barbarians”. The chief concern of these historical narrators was to survey Central Asia, and to render a bird’s eye view account.
After the First World War, attitudes towards bachabazi hardened. Colonial powers and post–colonial elites disapproved of these practices, which they viewed as lascivious and morally debauched. For these reasons, bachabazi dances became rare in cities, although they continued in rural areas.
Whereas earlier, bachabazi and male dance were common features of the cultural landscape throughout Central Asia, these practices became limited to Afghanistan over time, having waned among the Uzbeks. After the ascendance of the Taliban, bachabazi was outlawed on the grounds that it was a homosexual practice, incompatible with Sharia Law.
However, the ban on bachabazi by the Taliban did not eliminate the custom as much as it rendered the practice covert. Bachabazi resurfaced in Afghanistan after the collapse of the Taliban, and the practice has been consistently documented in media and popular culture since then.
US military and Bachabazi
In recent times, the US military, in its capacity as the neo-colonial occupier of Afghanistan, has had to engage with bachabazi and the attendant child abuse on numerous occasions. The attitude of the US authorities towards bachabazi has been ambivalent and conflicted.
Certain incidents indicate that the US military command was aware of rampant child abuse by its Afghan partners. In 2010, it was revealed by Wikileaks that DynCorp, a contractor working with the US military, had hired dancing boys in northern Afghanistan. Also in 2010, the US military employed private investigator AnnaMaria Cardinalli to investigate Afghan sexual practices in the Helmand province.
Although Cardinalli possessed no knowledge of Afghan languages and was not even a student of the humanities, she made some controversial remarks about bachabazi and Afghan sexuality in general. Cardinalli remarked, ““Women are foreign, and categorized by religious teachers as, at best, unclean or undesirable. It is then probable that the male companionship that a boy has known takes a sinister turn, in the form of the expression of pedophilia from the men that surround him.”[6]
In 2011, after an Afghan woman in the Kunduz province reported that her son had been raped by an Afghan local police commander, the commander was brutally beaten by two US Special Forces soldiers. As a direct result of this incident, a piece of legislation titled “Mandating America’s Responsibility to Limit Abuse, Negligence and Depravity Act” was enacted.[7] This law was also known as the “Martland Act”, named after Special Forces Sgt. 1st Class Charles Martland, who was one of the aforementioned US Special Forces soldiers.
However, reports indicate that several soldiers serving in Afghanistan have been instructed by their commanding officers to ignore and not intervene in instances of child sexual abuse. Capt. Dan Quinn, an American Special Forces officer, was relieved of his command and involuntarily separated from the military for fighting with an Afghan militia commander who kept a boy as a sex slave.[8]
Representations of bachabazi in popular culture
The 2003 fictional novel “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini and the 2007 film by the same name are two examples of depictions of bachabazi. The narrative describes how a young boy is forced to become a dancing boy and catamite to an official in the Taliban government.
The phenomenon of bachabazi was brought to worldwide attention by award-winning PBS Frontline documentary The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan. In this documentary, the Afghan-American journalist Najibullah Quraishi is shown investigating the prevalence of bachabazi as an accepted social practice. The documentary presents a war-ravaged and poverty–stricken social setting, in which poor male children are selected and groomed to become dancing bachas and catamites by older men, who see themselves as patrons.[9]
Since then, a number of other documentaries have also attempted to explore this subject.[10] The 2013 documentary “This Is What Winning Looks Like” describes the systematic kidnapping, sexual enslavement, and murder of young men and boys by local security forces in the Afghan city of Sangin. The documentary film contains several scenes of British independent film-maker Ben Anderson, listening to American military personal describe their difficulties working with the Afghan police forces regarding rape and sexual exploitation of local youth. The documentary depicts an American military advisor confronting the then-acting Afghan Police Chief on the issue, and having his concerns dismissed as illegitimate.[11]
Although Bachabazi has been documented in history and represented in film, very little is known about its provenance. Its connections with the performing arts – dance, music and acrobatics – were readily acknowledged by pre-modern observers. However, modern accounts of bachabazi focus heavily on the horrific sexual practices that seem to attend the spectacle.
It has been suggested that bachabazi is popular because women are hardly ever seen in public in Afghanistan. However, this line of reasoning does not take into account the fact that similar restrictions in other countries have not led to pederasty becoming popular, or that male dancing has not replaced female dancing.
By all accounts, bachabazi and the attendant sexual abuse seem to be prevalent and generally tolerated in present day Afghan society. However, there are no instances of adult men being prosecuted for such acts under Afghan Law. Media reports show that despite the associated sexual exploitation, the physical vulnerability and poverty resulting from near-continuous warfare in Afghanistan has made bachabazi a viable socio-economic lifestyle arrangement for young boys, thus exacerbating the sexual abuse of young boys in Afghanistan.
Deepak Jain is currently serving as a contributor for Synergy.
[1] Artira.com. (2018). NimaKiann’s Forum of Persian and Middle Eastern Dance. [online] Available at: http://artira.com/danceforum/articles/shay_maledancer.html [Accessed 18 Jun. 2018].
[2]Schuyler, Eugene, Turkistan: Notes of a Journey in Russian Turkistan, Khokand, Bukhara and Kuldja (London: Sampson, Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington) 1876, Vol.I pp 132.
[3]Schuyler, Eugene, Turkistan: Notes of a Journey in Russian Turkistan, Khokand, Bukhara and Kuldja (London: Sampson, Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington) 1876, Vol.I pp 132.
[4] Schuyler, Eugene, Turkistan: Notes of a Journey in Russian Turkistan, Khokand, Bukhara and Kuldja (London: Sampson, Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington) 1876, Vol.I pp 133.
[5]“Pastimes of Central Asians. Group of Male Musicians Posing with Several Batchas, or Dancing Boys, 2”. World Digital Library. Retrieved 14/06/2018
[6] HTT AF-6 Pashtun Sexuality Research Update and Findings, www.imagesoflife-online.co.uk/HTTAF6.doc.
[7] “Child Sexual Assault in Afghanistan:Implementation of the Leahy Laws and Reports of Assault by Afghan Security Forces” (PDF). Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. June 2017.
[8] Goldstein, Joseph (2015-09-20). “U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Sexual Abuse of Boys by Afghan Allies”. The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 15/06/2018
[9] Graham, Nicholas (April 22, 2010). “‘Dancing Boys Of Afghanistan’: Bacha Bazi Documentary Exposes Horrific Sexual Abuse Of Young Afghan Boys (VIDEO)”. The Huffington Post. Retrieved 16/06/2018
[10] “The Documentary: Afghanistan’s Dancing Boys”. BBC World Service. BBC. Mar 23, 2011. Retrieved 16/06/2018
[11] Vice Media, Inc. This Is What Victory Looks Like May 6, 2013
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