Posted on 01/11/2002 3:41:19 PM PST by Pokey78
Our correspondent sees the gay capital of South Asia throw off strictures of the Taleban
NOW that Taleban rule is over in Mullah Omar’s former southern stronghold, it is not only televisions, kites and razors which have begun to emerge.
Visible again, too, are men with their ashna, or beloveds: young boys they have groomed for sex.
Kandahar’s Pashtuns have been notorious for their homosexuality for centuries, particularly their fondness for naive young boys. Before the Taleban arrived in 1994, the streets were filled with teenagers and their sugar daddies, flaunting their relationship.
It is called the homosexual capital of south Asia. Such is the Pashtun obsession with sodomy — locals tell you that birds fly over the city using only one wing, the other covering their posterior — that the rape of young boys by warlords was one of the key factors in Mullah Omar mobilising the Taleban.
In the summer of 1994, a few months before the Taleban took control of the city, two commanders confronted each other over a young boy whom they both wanted to sodomise.
In the ensuing fight civilians were killed. Omar’s group freed the boy and appeals began flooding in for Omar to help in other disputes.
By November, Omar and his Taleban were Kandahar’s new rulers. Despite the Taleban disdain for women, and the bizarre penchant of many for eyeliner, Omar immediately suppressed homosexuality.
Men accused of sodomy faced the punishment of having a wall toppled on to them, usually resulting in death. In February 1998 three men sentenced to death for sodomy in Kandahar were taken to the base of a huge mud and brick wall, which was pushed over by tank. Two of them died, but one managed to survive.
“In the days of the Mujahidin, there were men with their ashna everywhere, at every corner, in shops, on the streets, in hotels: it was completely open, a part of life,” said Torjan, 38, one of the soldiers loyal to Kandahar’s new governor, Gul Agha Sherzai.
“But in the later Mujahidin years, more and more soldiers would take boys by force, and keep them for as long as they wished. But when the Taleban came, they were very strict about the ban. Of course, it still happened — the Taleban could not enter every house — but one could not see it.”
But for the first time since the Taleban fled, in the past three days, one can see the pairs returning: usually a heavily bearded man, seated next to, or walking with, a clean-shaven, fresh faced youth. There appears to be no shame or furtiveness about them, although when approached, they refuse to talk to a western journalist.
“They are just emerging again,” Torjan said. “The fighters too now have the boys in their barracks. This was brought to the attention of Gul Agha, who ordered the boys to be expelled, but it continues. The boys live with the fighters very openly. In a short time, and certainly within a year, it will be like pre-Taleban: they will be everywhere.”
This Pashtun tradition is even reflected in Pashtun poetry, odes written to the beauty and complexion of an ashna, but it is usually a terrible fate for the boys concerned. It is practised at all levels of Pashtun society, but for the poorer men, having an ashna can raise his status.
“When a man sees a boy he likes — the age they like is 15 or 16 — they will approach him in the street and start talking to him, offering him tea,” said Muhammad Shah, a shop owner. “Sometimes they go looking in the football stadium, or in the cinema (which has yet to reopen).
“He then starts to give him presents, hashish, or a watch, a ring, or even a motorbike. One of the most valued presents is a fighting pigeon, which can be worth up to $400 (£277). These boys are nearly always innocent, but such is the poverty here, they cannot refuse.”
Once the boy falls into the man’s clutches — nearly always men with a wife and family — he is marked for life, although the Kandaharis accept these relationships as part of their culture.
When driven around, ashna sit in the front passenger seat. The back seat is simply for his friends. Even the parents of the boys know in their hearts the nature of the relationship, but will tell people that their son is working for the man. They, like everyone else, will know this is a lie. “They say birds flew with both wings with the Taleban,” Muhammad said. “But not any more.”
This is a parody (cleverly taking some very beautiful and religious love poetry into a rather sleazy homosexual context) of one of the verses of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Edward FitzGerald translation, which is Islamic poetry:
"A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou
Beside me, singing in the Wilderness--
Ah Wilderness were Paradise enow."
Cute.
Things in the south are returning to their pre-Taliban state of anarchy, bandits, local warlords, various depravities, and last but not least opium cultivation. The "Northern Alliance" was THE government of Afghanistan before the Taliban took over but they were never able to control the south.
Next spring when the poppies start blooming there will be a lot more going on than just these liasions.
Try MichaelMedved.com --- I don't think it's still posted there, however.
Mary Eberhardt also wrote about this in The Weekly Standard: Pedophilia Chic:
"The notorious North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), predictably enough, cheered the study as 'good news.' Less explicable was the reaction within the gay press, which not only failed to distance its movement from the study, but went on to excoriate the APA's critics (particularly Laura Schlessinger).
"Writing in the New York Times Magazine , prominent author and activist Andrew Sullivan complained about the 'sour reception' that had greeted the study. After all, he wrote, Rind et al. had found that 'lasting psychological trauma among adult survivors of abuse, particularly for men, was much less than feared.' This, according to Sullivan, should be 'a reason for relief.' Instead, and what he evidently found disagreeable, 'outraged members of the religious right accused the APA of tolerating pedophilia' and 'launched a crusade to punish the organization.' He concluded sarcastically: 'That'll teach them to look on the bright side.' ... But at the same time Rauch, like Sullivan, avoided the real issue at hand—that 'Meta-Analytic' quite obviously aimed at de-stigmatizing boy pedophilia itself. Even more startling, though, was his bland depiction of Paidika . This is not exactly a journal in which pro-pedophile ideas have somehow surfaced accidentally. It is a publication dedicated to the phenomenon of 'boy-loving,' the most prominent such 'scholarly journal' in the world, whose long-time editor, the late Edward Brongersma, was a convicted pedophile as well as the author of a two-volume pedophile classic, Loving Boys . (To describe this as a journal which 'had taken pro-pedophilia stands' is akin to describing The Weekly Standard as a magazine where conservative arguments have reportedly appeared.) And, of course, the qualifier '23 and just out of college' served to soften Bauserman's earlier appearance in Paidika , suggesting it was an excess of youth."
"According to that view, the problem is less sex with minors than the people who declare themselves against it—Dr. Laura fans, congressmen, dissident therapists, religious types, and anyone else who does not grasp the necessity of putting words like 'child sexual abuse' in quotes."
Stay well - Stay safe = Stay armed - Yorktown
In the U.S. we like to pretend that all cultural values are equal but different. Naturally I disagree. But if there is no other benchmark by which to condemn a culture I would think we could agree on the way it treats its children.
Can we all agree that abusing young boys rates condemnation of the Pashtun culture?
Shalom.
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