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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?

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Speaker 1: From house Stop works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to

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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristen Um. Now we've

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Speaker 1: talked previously about child marriage and girls being taken from

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Speaker 1: their homes and families at a young age to be

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Speaker 1: married off, but we didn't really address what happens to

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Speaker 1: young boys in some of these traditional societies and tribal cultures.

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Speaker 1: So I think today we're going to talk about the

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Speaker 1: bacha bazzi of Afghanistan, the dancing boys who were taken

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Speaker 1: from their homes and forced to basically perform for much

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Speaker 1: wealthier men. Right because, like you said, while we were

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Speaker 1: searching the child brides, even though we focus all the

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Speaker 1: conversation on the girls, I think it's very important when

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Speaker 1: we're talking about sex trafficking, sexual slavery, early marriage, just

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Speaker 1: sexual exploitation of miners in general, Um, it is important

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Speaker 1: to talk about what might be happening to boys. And

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Speaker 1: bacha bazi is literally translated boy play, and this is

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Speaker 1: something that um happens in Afghanistan. We're focusing the conversation

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Speaker 1: just on Afghanistan today. Not to say that that young

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Speaker 1: boys aren't sexually exploited elsewhere, but this is a cultural

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Speaker 1: practice that's been going on for thousands of years and

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Speaker 1: UH in recent years there's been more media attention on

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Speaker 1: Bacha Bazi because UH, some people are concerned that there

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Speaker 1: has been a resurgence in this practice because of warfare

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Speaker 1: and um, I guess the restriction of the Taliban regime,

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Speaker 1: which we'll get into a little bit later, right. UM,

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Speaker 1: this practice involves boys as young as eleven being sold

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Speaker 1: by their families to entertain wealthy merchants and warlords. Um.

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Speaker 1: These men dressed the boys in women's clothing and train

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Speaker 1: them to sing and dance. But in many cases the

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Speaker 1: boys are also abused sexually. And the reason why these

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Speaker 1: boys will are are asked to dress that are made

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Speaker 1: to dress up like women and dances because in in

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Speaker 1: these Islamic communities, very hard line Islamic communities, women and

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Speaker 1: men who aren't married are not allowed to interact at all,

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Speaker 1: So these young boys serve as sort of like proxy

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Speaker 1: figures for for women. And in the Poshtune region in

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Speaker 1: UH southern Afghanistan in particular, Uh, military forces that have

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Speaker 1: gone in have observed this of you in different NGOs

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Speaker 1: have have noted that the male relationships in a lot

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Speaker 1: of these communities, because they're so gender segregated, the bonds

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Speaker 1: between the men are often extreme. There is a lot

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Speaker 1: of um kind of latent homosexuality that happens and all

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Speaker 1: so boschi baza and the boy play, which um, I

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Speaker 1: think you know, it's important to uh categorize away from

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Speaker 1: just homosexuality, right. UM. A lot of different articles written

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Speaker 1: about this stress that because women and men are so segregated,

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Speaker 1: that men often have to uh find substitutes for that

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Speaker 1: companionship that they might experience with a girlfriend or a wife. Um,

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Speaker 1: they don't get to really experience the affection of a

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Speaker 1: woman because most boys um in this region are sort

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Speaker 1: of separated from their mothers around age seven and they

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Speaker 1: become basically the the responsibility solely of their fathers. UM,

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Speaker 1: So they don't really get to witness uh a woman's

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Speaker 1: affection and grow up you know, experiencing women normally. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I think we should also point out the historically,

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Speaker 1: you know, Afghanistan is not the only place where something

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Speaker 1: like this happens. For instance, uh, the Greeks had dancing

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Speaker 1: boys in the ancient days. But the Taliban has kind

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Speaker 1: of a tricky relationship with this Bacha Bazi practice because officially,

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Speaker 1: the Taliban, who controlled Afghanistan for a long time until

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Speaker 1: two thousand one when they were alsted by US forces,

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Speaker 1: they tried to erase pedophilia from the Pastian culture in particular.

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Speaker 1: But and they did that through the Ministry for the

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Speaker 1: Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. And you

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Speaker 1: can imagine this is like, I mean, the hard line Islamic,

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Speaker 1: This isn't exactly the most progressive force. But then when

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Speaker 1: the US lad THEA invasion of Afghanistan in two thousand

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Speaker 1: one and alsa the Taliban, there's this notion that since

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Speaker 1: that that Ministry UH for the Promotion of Virtue and

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Speaker 1: Prevention of Vice has gone, then that's led the way

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Speaker 1: and open the doors to Bacchi Bossi becoming more widespread.

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Speaker 1: But at the same time it might have just pushed

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Speaker 1: it sort of under the carpet a little bit, because

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Speaker 1: there was an l A Times article about Bashi Bazi

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Speaker 1: saying that the Taliban still carried on with these boys,

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Speaker 1: with this boy play, but they kept it in secret

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Speaker 1: and hid them in the madrass or the religious schools. Right,

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Speaker 1: it wasn't as out in the open. People didn't talk

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Speaker 1: about it. They weren't parading their young boys around in

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Speaker 1: the streets or anything like that. But if they're pushing it,

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Speaker 1: I mean not to I hope this doesn't sound too controversial,

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Speaker 1: but when I read that talking about pushing uh this

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Speaker 1: form of pedophilia and these all male um kind of

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Speaker 1: cordoned off groups in religious schools kind of reminded me

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Speaker 1: of of the Catholic Church scandals that have gone on

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Speaker 1: because there, you know, and and the main response that

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Speaker 1: came after that was, well, there need to be more

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Speaker 1: female There needs to be more female leadership and accountability

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Speaker 1: within the Catholic Church as a way to um possibly

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Speaker 1: prevent that kind of molestation was going on there. Seems

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Speaker 1: like that's a similar kind of case possibly in the madras.

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Speaker 1: Is right, and a lot of these um Bacha dancers

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Speaker 1: are often abused children whose families have rejected them. A

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Speaker 1: lot of this, you know, we talked in the Child

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Speaker 1: Bride episode about UM families who didn't really have another option.

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Speaker 1: They needed the money. They're they're in society's experiencing civil strife,

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Speaker 1: they don't have a lot of money, so they ended

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Speaker 1: up selling their daughters or you know, just receiving a

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Speaker 1: large dowry. And it's sort of a similar situation with

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Speaker 1: the Bacha dancers. Um they're usually released at age nineteen,

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Speaker 1: but at that point they've spent most of their childhood

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Speaker 1: performing for men um and at age nineteen they're basically

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Speaker 1: expected to go get married reclaim their status as men,

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Speaker 1: although you know, there's a lasting stigma attached to being

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Speaker 1: one of these dancers. And sometimes they'll even keep this

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Speaker 1: practice within the family, where uh say, a husband will

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Speaker 1: get himself a like a young beardless boy, and then

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Speaker 1: once the child grows up, he might have the Bacha

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Speaker 1: mary one of his daughters keep it in the family. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and then the cycle just continues, right, And they some

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Speaker 1: of the boys that were interviewed when they said, okay,

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Speaker 1: you're about to grow up, get out of this practice.

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Speaker 1: What are you going to do? And a lot of

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Speaker 1: them said that they wanted to get their own either

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Speaker 1: bacha bossy or a whole group of them. The words

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Speaker 1: stable was tossed around a lot, like they actually wanted

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Speaker 1: to make enough money and have enough resources to have

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Speaker 1: a stable of young dancing boys that they could keep

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Speaker 1: and have at parties. Sure, because it's now become associated

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Speaker 1: with UM status in a lot of these groups where

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Speaker 1: they'll even have UM, say like local commanders or will

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Speaker 1: have uh their boys. Their individual boys kind of compete

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Speaker 1: to see who is the best boy, and it's a

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Speaker 1: source of pride for these for these men. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: very common among powerful commanders. A a former senior Muja

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Speaker 1: Hadeen commander said he got a boy because every commander

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Speaker 1: had one and he wanted to be able to compete.

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Speaker 1: I mean, this just sounds like they're talking about fancy

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Speaker 1: cars instead of actual people. Um. There's a sort of

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Speaker 1: a creepy, very creepy quote from a batch of Bozzi

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Speaker 1: pimp who they called the German because his mustache was blonde. Uh.

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Speaker 1: He said, I go to every province to have happiness

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Speaker 1: and pleasure with boys, and he points out that when

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Speaker 1: some of the boys aren't good for dancing, they'll be

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Speaker 1: used for other purposes. And it took the reporter. This

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Speaker 1: was from a front Line, a PBS documentary. Um. After

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Speaker 1: he was pressed for what these other purposes were, he said,

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Speaker 1: I mean for sodomy and other sexual activities and a

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Speaker 1: lot of times if they if these boys resist, they

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Speaker 1: might be killed. Right when a reporter talked with some

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Speaker 1: of the dancing boys, Um, a thirteen year old offered

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Speaker 1: that some of them are killed if they stray. He said,

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Speaker 1: if you don't please them, they will beat you and

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Speaker 1: people get killed. And in fact, a fifteen year old

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Speaker 1: was reportedly murdered after trying to escape from his master,

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Speaker 1: a well known drug baron and warlord. And Um it

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Speaker 1: was a police officer actually who supplied the weapon that

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Speaker 1: killed the boy. Um And while he was sentenced to

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Speaker 1: sixteen years, he got out after only a few months. Well,

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Speaker 1: and that theme comes up a lot to Caroline, where

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Speaker 1: there are these police officials who might be involved in

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Speaker 1: facilitating this UH, their government officials who are actually in

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Speaker 1: charge of preventing sexual exploitation who have been found at

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Speaker 1: these uh Bacha Bazi parties and UH. In a very

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Speaker 1: depressing note to this story, there was a Wiki leaks

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Speaker 1: cable from Afghanistan that was released revealing that the u

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Speaker 1: u s. Government contractor Dine Corps through a party for

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Speaker 1: Afghan security recruits with yeah, they brought in actually like

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Speaker 1: through a party brought in the beardless boys to dance

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Speaker 1: and entertain them. Uh. That is, and that's using taxpayer money.

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Speaker 1: That's terrifying. Yeah. Well, the UN Special Representative for Children

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Speaker 1: and Armed Conflict calls this whole thing a form of slavery,

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Speaker 1: rightly so. And she calls for the prosecution of the

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Speaker 1: men for participating because, you know, using using the reasoning

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Speaker 1: of we're not going to get them to stop by asking,

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Speaker 1: We're not going to get them to stop by saying, hey,

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Speaker 1: wouldn't you like to go bowling and stuff. It's you know,

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Speaker 1: it's hard to root out a practice that has been

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Speaker 1: in place for centuries. Um. But you know, she says

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Speaker 1: this that we need to prosecute these people, um and

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Speaker 1: really punish them. But you know, the reporter that the

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Speaker 1: PBS reporter um witnessed local police officers at an illegal

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Speaker 1: Botcha Bossi parties. So it is very widespread and part

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Speaker 1: of the culture. Yeah. And we haven't been able to

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Speaker 1: put offer any any statistics for precisely how many boys

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Speaker 1: Afghan boys are involved in this because it's so kind

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Speaker 1: of shrouded in secrecy. It's like people acknowledge that it happens,

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Speaker 1: but they're not going to name any names and they're

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Speaker 1: not gonna share any kinds of details even on I

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Speaker 1: mean I went on YouTube before we came in the

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Speaker 1: into the studio and they're they're public videos of the

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Speaker 1: boys of the boys dancing. I mean, it's nothing sexually explicit.

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Speaker 1: It's it's Afghan boys dressed up like women, dancing like women,

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Speaker 1: UM and surrounded by UH by dozens of older bearded men. Right. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: The there was an article in the Guardian UM where

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Speaker 1: one young dancer said men like women and they're not available,

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Speaker 1: so we act like women. And that just goes back

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Speaker 1: to the segregation of the society. And so if you

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Speaker 1: want to look at a pretty lady dancing, but that's

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Speaker 1: just not an option. UM, I guess they make their

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Speaker 1: own entertainment using children. And in seeking to explain the

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Speaker 1: roots cultural roots of this practice aside from just pure

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Speaker 1: gender segregation, UM, there was apport a report put out

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Speaker 1: by the of the U. S. Military's Human Terrain Team

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Speaker 1: that had gone into UM Afghanistan and was particularly focused

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Speaker 1: on the UH the Pashtun region, and it noted that

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Speaker 1: Kandahar's Kandahar Provinces a long, artistic and poetic tradition idealizes

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Speaker 1: or idolizes, I should say, the beardless boy as the

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Speaker 1: icon of physical beauty, and nineteenth century British authors reported

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Speaker 1: their observation of Poshtun fighters seeing poetic odes of longing

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Speaker 1: for you young boys, and it was kind of that

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Speaker 1: that does sort of echo, you know, similar kinds of

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Speaker 1: things that we see back with uh, like they said

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Speaker 1: earlier with the Greeks doing similar similar similarly exalting the

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Speaker 1: young uh pre pubescent boy um. And then in an

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Speaker 1: article from San Francisco Gate from two thousand ten, sociologists

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Speaker 1: and anthropologists attribute the problem to again going back to Islam,

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Speaker 1: to perverse interpretations of Islamic law. Right the I think

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Speaker 1: the Human Train Team report also kind of talked about how, um,

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Speaker 1: it's not Islam saying necessarily that it's okay to be

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Speaker 1: doing these things. It's it's local interpretations. And they sort

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Speaker 1: of talked about how um, much of the local populace

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Speaker 1: does not read the Quran, that it's sort of interpreted

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Speaker 1: for them by local authorities. And so you know, when

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Speaker 1: that stuff gets ingrained in a in a society, in

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Speaker 1: a region, it's sort of hard to um break away

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Speaker 1: from it right, and that's why I think it is

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Speaker 1: important to UM, you know, to emphasize that bascha bazi

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Speaker 1: is not an Islamic practice. And on. On the upside,

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Speaker 1: there does seem to be a greater effort by NGOs

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Speaker 1: UM to call more attention to this and try to

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Speaker 1: stop this sexual exploitation of young boys UM. For instance,

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Speaker 1: in January of this year, two thousand eleven, the United

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Speaker 1: Nations Assistants Mission in Afghanistan UH and their National Action

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Speaker 1: Plan addressed the recruitment of underage children into the national

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Speaker 1: Afghan National Security Forces and the sexual exploitation of children

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Speaker 1: by government officials, security forces, and civil society because there

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Speaker 1: this is sort of a joint effort to stop the

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Speaker 1: recruitment of child soldiers in the area and also sexual

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Speaker 1: violence against children, which would include brought you right, and

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Speaker 1: they sort of uh, they they talk about boys being

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Speaker 1: recruited at a very young age into the military as

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Speaker 1: part of this whole taking them away from their mothers,

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Speaker 1: taking them away from any female influence. And what it

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Speaker 1: kind of sounds like to me, Kristen, is that these

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Speaker 1: reports and these articles are sort of insinuating that a

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Speaker 1: female presence is what sort of is lacking and that

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Speaker 1: if there were more of a female presence, perhaps some

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Speaker 1: of these horrific things wouldn't be happening. But because women

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Speaker 1: are considered unclean, dirty, to be avoided, to be totally removed,

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Speaker 1: UM that they are actually exposed to more violence. And

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Speaker 1: boys don't get to see their mothers, their sisters being

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Speaker 1: treated like normal people. They are instead treated like dogs

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Speaker 1: basically right, and it only perpetuates UM that cycle. So

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Speaker 1: I think that I think that about sums it up

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Speaker 1: by It was something that I had not heard of

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Speaker 1: until UM last week when a friend of ours actually

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Speaker 1: sent us an email she listened to the Child Bride's episode,

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Speaker 1: said Hey, you guys should talk about botcha boss, right,

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Speaker 1: because yeah, it's not just small girls who are being

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Speaker 1: exploited all over the world's boys too. Yeah, and this

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Speaker 1: is just one UM. It's important to put this, I think,

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Speaker 1: in the in the broader context of sex trafficking and

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Speaker 1: sex slavery that is unfortunately happening all over the world,

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Speaker 1: not just in Afghanistan, not just in the East, but

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Speaker 1: also here in the United States, right, And if you

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Speaker 1: want to learn more about it, I really recommend going

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Speaker 1: to UM, the PBS website and looking at botch Bozzy. Um.

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Speaker 1: They have the transcript of the report. They have video

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Speaker 1: you can watch they have a conversation with the reporter

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Speaker 1: and the producer. It's all really interesting and it's something

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Speaker 1: that I had never heard of. Yeah, and I'll toss

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Speaker 1: the link up on Facebook so people can easily check

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Speaker 1: it out. And if you would like to send us

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Speaker 1: an email about Bacha Bozzi, our email address is mom

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Speaker 1: Stuff at how stuff works dot com and I have

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Speaker 1: just one email here to read. This is in response

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Speaker 1: to a recent episode on women in Science, and this

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Speaker 1: is from Roberto that I just listened to the Women

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Speaker 1: in Science episodes at I was washing dishes. I know

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Speaker 1: I'm a man's man, and although I heard a few

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Speaker 1: familiar names, I also didn't hear others. So I thought

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Speaker 1: maybe i'd share some of my own favorites in case

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Speaker 1: you happen to do some follow up installment later on.

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Speaker 1: Emily do Chatelai, who contributed the square in Einstein's E

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Speaker 1: equal MC square equation. Lies Mightner, who proved Einstein's theory

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Speaker 1: of matter energy equivalence. Caroline Porko, who is a planetary

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Speaker 1: scientist also known as ms MMS Saturn h Susan Greenfield,

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Speaker 1: although she's been putting her foot in her mouth recently

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Speaker 1: with her ideas about the impact of modern media on

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Speaker 1: young brains. Sarah Blaffer hardy and that's hardy without any vowel.

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Speaker 1: It's just hr d one not a type of anthropologists

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Speaker 1: and primatologists. And there's Lida cos Me Days. I think

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Speaker 1: I really butcher that you ever want to correct us

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Speaker 1: lead to Facebook. She's a leading evolutionary psychologists, so I

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Speaker 1: should probably know how to pronounce her name and also

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Speaker 1: be able to cite her work with since evolutionary psychology

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Speaker 1: comes up so often. And then we have Hypatia, who

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Speaker 1: was one of the first mathematicians in the ancient world,

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Speaker 1: and she was also killed by a riotous group of

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Speaker 1: people who threw bricks at her because they were not

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Speaker 1: too happy that one of the leading mathematicians at the

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Speaker 1: time was a woman. Don't be scared women women who

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Speaker 1: like math. It's great, it is great. You should not

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Speaker 1: stone them to death. And thanks Roberto for sending this

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Speaker 1: list of a female scientists and thinkers and mathematicians. Keep

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Speaker 1: them coming, folks. Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot

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Speaker 1: com is our email address, and you can always visit

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Speaker 1: us over on Facebook, Like us, follow us on Twitter

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Speaker 1: at mom Stuff Podcast, and you can head over to

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Speaker 1: our blog during the week, It's stuff Mom Never Told

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Speaker 1: You at how Stuff works dot com. Be sure to

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Speaker 1: check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.

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Speaker 1: Join how Staff Work staff as we explore the most

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Speaker 1: promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The houstef works iPhone

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Speaker 1: app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes. Brought to

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