American Bacha Bazi
Edited Aug 23
In the autumn of 2011, I accepted a job in Afghanistan as a military contractor. My role there was to support efforts rebuilding the country’s infrastructure as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. Living in Kabul, I discovered there are numerous street boys known as the bacha bazi or “Dancing Boys.” They survive unnoticed in the open, and they barely exist as victims in a world of sexual exploitation. It was an experience we shared, these boys and myself, even though my abuse happened on the other side of the world and in the middle of the United States. That reality was my connection to them. It silently broke my heart as the people I worked with had no idea about my past as a survivor of sex trafficking. In that environment, it was safer for me if no one knew. People often think the sex trafficking of children is limited to remote places such as Kabul, but it happens worldwide. It happens in the United States and other western nations too. The forced acts of sexual molestation were and are the same, regardless of any cultural differences.
I first learned about the issue through a very brief mention of it in a newsletter bulletin sent to ex-pats by the U.S. State Department in 2011. I no longer have the newsletter, but it said little on the subject beyond noting that the number of Afghan boys coerced into a life of sexual abuse was on the rise. It identified the practice by the name “Dancing Boys” and did not mention the term bacha bazi in any context. Amazed that this practice could possibly exist in Afghanistan I wanted to know more. Who are these boys and how they could end up in this sad situation? Didn’t their families care? I began to fill in the gaps with other information available on-line, supplemented by my own knowledge from my former career work as a U.S. Naval Intelligence Officer and my life as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.
In spite of my caution, I did get the courage to ask my new Afghan friends about this. They told me that bacha bazi more literally translated means “boy play” which sounds innocent but it is not. They said this was once considered a problem or cultural norm in the mostly rural areas, but the availability of dancing boys had spread to Kabul and Afghanistan’s other major cities since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. One of my Afghan co-workers became a good friend and said there is a saying from the Pashtun community that goes “women are for children and boys are for fun.” He also said Alexander the Great introduced the tradition, but who really knows for sure.
The bacha bazi are a loosely connected group of boys and the men who literally own them. The boy’s services were bought from their families with promises of safe and steady work, often after the male head of the household was killed in the war. Most are believed to be 12 to 13 when they are recruited, but other reports say they are as young as 5 or 6 years of age. These boys, once secured away from public scrutiny, are quickly taught to dance in a provocative way, dressed in women’s clothing and sometimes wearing make-up. They are taught to then submit to sexual abuse. For the boys, failure to quickly comply means a beating.
I too was groomed very young and introduced to a sex trafficking network around age 5. Like the Afghan boys, both the men and women who were using me would also hit me for not cooperating. In Afghanistan, the tradition of buying and selling children into the world of sexual slavery is centuries old but I knew the sexual abuse of children has been a hidden part of all other cultures around the globe, including those in the West.
In Afghanistan, torn by many wars over the centuries, these boys are the featured entertainment at illegal parties as dancers and singers of erotic songs. Later they submit to sexual abuse from the highest bidder. Such gatherings are attended by businessmen, military and police leaders, and even by powerful drug lords from among Afghanistan’s insurgents in the rural provinces. For some, having a stable of boys is considered a status symbol. At first, the boys enticed into this world do not likely know the true nature of what they are getting into, even if they willingly accept the role. Many are simply taken off the streets and are not heard from again. Ultimately, they become trapped in a world that sees them merely as objects to be used for the pleasure of the powerful and wealthy. I know that feeling, as it was the same for me. Even though the cultures are different, the experience is the same for trafficked children along with the long-term impacts.
No one in our compound knew that I shared the experiences of the street boys. Even though people would talk about it, I said nothing about myself. I had only started counseling less than a year before and was not ready for that. The news we received by television was full of the Sandusky/Penn State matter, which caused me further internal distress. Regardless, for me to say anything would have cost my job since any distraction from the work there would do so. Issues from home, stayed at home, end of discussion.
Kabul is an ancient city defined by a rabbit’s warren of narrow streets and non-descript adobe houses in some of the older sections. I suspect the city has had periods of incredible beauty but today many buildings are half-destroyed, if not fully in ruin. More modern homes and other buildings that are still intact are often hidden behind imposing walls with well-guarded entrances. Some dancing boys live and work in these invisible houses behind the walls, but often they live on the street or even at home where their owners know how to quickly find them. This street life means they have access to other children at play, who may be targeted later to keep the supply going. Their existence appears to be equally invisible to the over one million people who call Kabul home, a city that is also an active warzone as gunfire and bombings outside our compound would routinely remind me. I believe that in most places whether Afghanistan or the United States or in any other country, many people are unaware that children are bought and sold as a sexual commodity. These children are invisible but also exist in plain sight at the same time for those who know where to look. For some not involved but knowing, they choose to be ignorant or indifferent. Not my kid, not my problem. My thought is this…most people are good, and this reality simply is not something they could conceive happening, regardless of cultural norms. They don’t see it because they do not even know to look for it. The same is true in the USA.
Among the Afghans with whom I worked their personal survival was at the forefront of their minds. So, it would seem that with people’s attention focused elsewhere, the business of selling boys for sex has come out of the shadows again since the Taliban fled in 2001. It is an open (but ignored) secret. The subject is considered so taboo that those who could help will often do nothing out of fear of reprisal, especially if they have children of their own. That fear is real because in Afghanistan the child sellers can easily eliminate anyone who stands in their way.
Traffickers threaten people in the U.S. too. I know because I’ve received threats since I started speaking about my past in 2013 in the public arena, but that does not keep me silent. My lived experience as a sexually abused boy gave me the ability to keep getting up as a kid no matter what, even as I did so in silence. A child’s silence is a tool of the predators and they use it well. Young victims are afraid of the consequences that telling anyone might bring. As an adult, I will not be afraid of these people anymore, and I’ll keep speaking wherever I am invited.
In April of 2010, PBS’s Frontline broadcast an extensive hidden-camera report on the plight of Afghanistan’s dancing boys. The report confirmed much of what I had learned too. I found it online and watched it alone in my room one night. This broadcast, like other articles I’d seen, stated that in Afghanistan boys are recruited into this world from ages 11 to 13 years old. My new friends said quietly that many boys are brought into that life at much younger ages. One boy featured in the broadcast was identified as only Shafiq, referenced as being 11-years-old. He clearly could not have been more than 8 or 9, even with his face blurred for the broadcast.
The man identified as buying him is called Dastager, a former rebel commander who started trading in boys 20 years back before the report. Dastager said he supplies boys to other men and admits he’s been with between 2,000 and 3,000 boys himself. Dastager smiles, saying he does not engage in sex with the boys, but it is a serpent’s smile. Other men in the broadcast are much more open about sex with the boys, claiming the boys want it, something people in the US have told me too. Dastager says that he has protection from the local police as well. He says, too, that the boys he finds are from poor families. They are purchased from their parents for their innocence. Dastager is also married and has two young sons of his own. He keeps a separate home for his dancing boys. The Dastager later states proudly that 11-year-old Shafiq is a “very good boy”.
It is a term familiar to me as well. In my own abuse, I would be told it was time to “be a good boy” and for years I hated those words. Through counseling, I have gotten past it, but hearing that in the broadcast showed me tactics are the same, regardless of cultural context. In another part of the report, Dastager would refer to Shafiq as that little bastard when he thought the boy had run away, which shows the man’s true nature. Later in the broadcast, Dastager would call another of his sex slaves a “daddy’s boy”. That too is a term used in the west by those seeking boys for sex. Evil has no borders and it was all too familiar to me.
A recent article from Newsweek in November of 2020 includes an interview with one middle-aged man identified as simply Kamel, who was introduced to bacha bazi at age 14. Kamel says he still dances and indicated that boys as young as 9 or 10 are frequent party dancers he has observed. He said they already bore the scars of violence and sexual abuse. Kamel notes that their condition shows these boys were sexualized at a much younger age, just as I was at age 5. In Afghanistan’s rural areas, parents are typically poor and the buyers come from the ranks of tribal elders or other powerful men. Afghanistan has a long cultural history of strict tribal structures and deference to wealth. Those at the top get what they want, including the sons of poor families. Once a new boy is obtained, adults and even older boys who are already under a master’s control are given the task of teaching him to dance dressed as a girl and to sing or play music.
The people who got me as a preteen were not the sketchy trench-coat guy imagined as a predator. They were people with a suit and tie image of respectability, and some were women too. In my case, they were mostly strangers. I’m sure all of them knew who I was and what I had been taught to do. I don’t fear them today and in fact, I have forgiven them. As a Christian, I believe they will be held accountable by God if not in this life, so I don’t have to worry about it any longer. In the Frontline report, several men spoke of how, sooner or later, the boys become sexual objects. For those who are not skilled at dancing or music, they are taught to provide oral sex at an early age and are eventually penetrated anally, both illegal practices under Afghan law. In the U.S. children like I was may not be dancing as openly at parties as a sort of preview for buyers, but the end result is the same. Thus, the grooming is different in different cultures but it all has the goal of sexualizing a child and making them compliant, along with making them fearful if they tell.
Oddly enough, even though foreign governments pour billions in aid and support into Afghanistan they back away from this touchy subject for fear of “annoying” the country’s leadership. It was made clear (at least in 2011) to foreign government officials and to employees of non-governmental organizations such as myself that the topic was off-limits. Yet without foreign aid and support, those who hold power in Kabul would not likely stay in power for long, at least that is what several Afghans told me during my time there. My new friends also sought to keep their children safe and to live normal lives, goals shared by parents everywhere. While the politicians and generals fight different wars, these children in the shadows live in fear and are forgotten in the complex world of international geopolitics. They don’t count.
For them, there is no real hope of escape. Fear, diplomacy, polite indifference, or simply a true lack of interest prevents anyone from trying to help them. The best Afghans can hope for is to keep their own children safe till they reach adulthood. It’s one of many worries facing Afghan parents who also deal with war, drug lords, tribal infighting and disease just to get their children to grow up.
It struck me as equally odd that Afghanistan proudly considers itself a fundamentalist Muslim nation, and the trade in children does raise concerns from a religious standpoint in the public arena. Even so, children are for sale in Kabul along with alcohol, for the right price even though Islamic law prohibits both. The same is true in my country and laws set up that are supposed to protect kids have been poorly written or ineffective. That is changing in the USA with new federal and state legislation enacted in recent years that makes it clear children under 18 years of age cannot consent to sexual activity regardless of the circumstances.
For me, as one of the very few survivors who is male and who speaks publicly, the fight is different. I’ve been turned down for speaking engagements at churches and secular venues, simply because people don’t want to open that topic up and risk perhaps having to recognize that it happens here as well. Often if they do allow speakers, they want female survivor leaders only. I’ve even been told it doesn’t happen to boys, and I’ve heard much worse when I ask about why boys are ignored. Few in law enforcement consider me a resource for training even though my perspective is unique to 50% of the victims involved who do not typically get representation. They rely on statistics that are 20 years out of date and were never accurate to begin with. I heard representatives from one anti-trafficking group proclaim that all women and girls are victims or potential victims, and all men and boys are predators or potential predators. Both ideas are lies, along with saying 99% of buyers are male and 99% of victims are female. When I do hear people say “a disproportionate share of victims are women and girls” I’ll ask this. What exactly was my proportionate share? I have never gotten an answer.
The good news is that is changing as well, as I get more invitations to speak through organizations such as PACT and others. On a larger scale too, I am actively involved with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) being a law enforcement organization with 57 countries as member nations and non-profits worldwide who have come together to fight human trafficking. In Colorado, I was told there is not enough room for me at the speaker’s table, so I decided to build a bigger table and expand my network far beyond what I could have done just in here in Colorado. Still, some local non-profits, law enforcement agencies and even government officials do not yet accept what I am trying to do.
For Afghans trying to create greater awareness, there are struggles too. Like in the U.S. and elsewhere, combating child sex trafficking is akin to pushing sand uphill. The Afghans fighting this are making a difference if only in small ways because more Afghans are speaking up regardless of the danger. According to the article in The Star, videographer Batoor spent months chronicling the plight of the dancing boys. When Batoor completed his project, he assumed that non-governmental organizations would be eager to exhibit his work and raise awareness of the issue. To his surprise, none were. Batoor is quoted as telling The Star:
“They said: ‘We don’t want to make enemies in Afghanistan” summarizing the general response.
As for the boys, Batoor says that if they manage to grow up some turn to drugs or alcohol because for them there is no normal life. Suicide is a reality for these boys too.
“In Afghan society, if you are raped or you are abused, you will not have space in society to live proudly” according to Batoor. For too many decades in the West that was the reality too for survivors of sexual abuse. I grew up believing if anyone knew my story I’d be seen as damaged goods, and that belief was one more thing that kept me silent. I’m not buying into that lie anymore either.
It is difficult to know how much effort Afghan police officials put into investigating the abuse of boys. In the Frontline report, they proudly state that they actively prosecute the offenders, but any good people who do oppose this face significant obstacles. In Kabul, Frontline’s report includes video evidence showing a police officer in charge of youth programs and a lead Afghan investigator both attending an illegal dancing boy event. According to the videographer, the local authorities are easily identifiable in the crowd and are enjoying the show. In the video, the boy dances seductively as men sitting on the floor clap and smile. It is likely that later his fate will be to provide a sexual performance, when he’s sold to the highest bidder after the show. Since women in Afghanistan are not allowed to attend these parties, it is boys who provide the entertainment.
In April 2012, a report from the Washington Post described another scenario, later re-reported in The Star. It identified one man called Mirzahan, a 22-year-old farmer who speaks about a 9-year-old boy who was also present during the interview. The boy had pale skin and piercing eyes. My Afghan friends told me that because of the many invasions of their country from Genghis Kahn to the Greeks and Russians, their people are a racial mix of many cultures, and they said blue eyes are seen as exceptionally exotic. The farmer says he was captivated at first sight as well.
“He is more handsome than anyone in the village,” the 22-year-old said, to offer a reason why he is grooming the boy as a sexual partner and companion. There was another important factor that made the boy an easy target to take on as a bacha bazi. “He doesn’t have a father, so there is no one to stop this.”
In addition to tribal elders and drug lords, the article in The Star reported that the State Department’s 2010 Human Rights Report highlights members of the international military alliance as reporting that Afghanistan’s security forces were actively sexually abusing boys in an environment of criminal impunity. These are the same security forces that receive training and weapons from the U.S. led coalition, yet the fear of upsetting Afghan authorities seems to have caused the international community to refrain from drawing attention to the issue. Hayatullah Jawad, the head of Afghanistan’s Human Rights Research and Advocacy Organization based in Mazar-al-Sharif tells The Star:
“It is very sensitive and taboo in Afghanistan. There are a lot of people involved in this case, but no one wants to talk about it.”
He stresses that the boys are seen as property, and some can be sold for tens of thousands of dollars or just rented out as dancers, offered for sexual use after the party thus producing even more income for their owners. In the interview, Jawad said flatly;
“This is abuse. Most of these children are not willing to do this. They do this for money. Their families are very poor.”
The Star report further detailed interviews with other men who are young friends of Mirzahan. The men freely admit they sexually exploit boys, but agreed to be interviewed only if just their first names were used. They met in a typical Afghan mud house at a remote village in Balkh province, in a home similar to the interviews conducted in the Frontline report.
The 9-year-old boy is present. He is dressed in pink pants and a tunic. His new owner says he uses the boy because marrying a woman is prohibitively expensive. The young man states he has not taken the boy sexually but admits the child is being “introduced” to slightly older dancing boys, implying that he is being molested and trained for sex. In my own life, it was older boys who sexually abused me at first. The 9-year-old is asked how he feels about his new life and says he is happy, yet this report confirms that boys who object or speak out are beaten and some even killed to set an example to other would-be snitches. What else is a 9-year-old faced with that situation going to say other than he likes it? As an elementary school boy during my abuse, I also heard threats of my dog being killed or my family being told who would then not want me. By age 9, I knew how to drink alcohol, smoke and had been introduced and used in child sexual abuse material. That was my normal. In those days no one ever asked me about why I was often a sad and distant little boy. Even if they had, the threats had worked and kept me silent.
The report from The Star describes another man identified as a 23-year-old Afghan soldier who is assigned to a unit in the southern province of Kandahar. The soldier says he’s attracted to teenage males and that he is currently in a relationship with a 16-year-old boy, but that will soon come to an end. He says;
“When he starts growing a beard, his time will expire and I will try to find another one who doesn’t have a beard.”
Reading the story, for me, begs the question as to why children are even trafficked at all? Why there, and why in my world growing up, and why today? I’ve found no answer other than it’s because of evil, nothing more. For me, time spent trying to decipher the nature of evil would be a distraction from the good I’m trying to do in the world now, so I won’t go there. In reference to Afghanistan’s centuries-old and fairly strict gender segregation requirements, one man in The Star report provides the answer for purchasing boys.
“You cannot take a wife with you to a party, but a boy you can take anywhere.”
The practice of purchasing boys is not limited to young or single men either as the Frontline story shows. These men, like predators everywhere, treat the child with false kindness at first, which further deepens the boy’s trust in them. It was the same with me and the older teenage boys who befriended me. By the time the boy learns he will have to provide sex, he’ll also know that not to do so will mean he will be hurt badly. This too was how the process played out in my life.
It is an old story world-wide, as this cycle of abuse is not unique to predators in Afghanistan. Because of the taboo nature of bacha bazi, there are no reliable figures on exactly how widespread the problem is. Not all Afghans share the view that bacha bazi is acceptable, and they offer hope that Afghanistan can become a nation of enforced and fair laws. The Afghan reporter who helped put together the Frontline broadcast said it best.
"What was so unnerving about the men I had met was not just their lack of concern for the damage their abuse was doing to the boys," he says. "It was also their casualness with which they operated and the pride with which they showed me their boys, their friends, their world. They clearly believed that nothing they were doing was wrong."
The sexual abuse of boys and girls is a real issue worldwide. It likely happens in almost every town and city. On the surface, my life as a child appeared normal in all respects. My family and friends now know the truth of what happened to me as best I can tell it without being graphic. They all support me too. I have accepted my past as not being the end of my story as my work today proves. I started writing this article shortly after returning from Afghanistan. It was not for anyone’s particular use, but for my own healing. I have a God-given gift for words and telling my own experiences. It helps me to continue on. Updating the article and watching the videos again to recall certain things brought back old memories and the sadness connected to them, but that didn’t last very long. That shows me I’ve made significant progress inside and that real healing is possible. I am not a broken boy any longer, but a man who has been redeemed and set free.
As a Christian and a Pastor in jail-related ministries, my wounds have become weapons to help others who suffered from abuse. I have words of hope now, not words of anger and hate. God has given me purpose, including reaching out to other survivors and also to convicted sex offenders as well. Why them? If all I needed was a secular reason to do what I do in jail, here it is. Law enforcement agencies tell me that when a survivor like myself goes to these jail ministries, the re-offending rate of men after release drops by over 90%. That encourages me too but ultimately my motivation is my faith. I forgive because God forgives me. If I can eliminate 90 out of 100 future kids like me from being victimized, that secular reason ought to be sufficient for non-Christians and Christians alike to support me and others in this fight. I get to share a message about grace that is more powerful than sin. That’s why I do what I do.
Please consider helping PACT and many other non-profits like my own Starfish Ministries in Colorado who serve this issue. The truth is, as you were reading this somewhere a child is being raped, beaten, or killed. We cannot be silent any longer.
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More about Sean Wheeler’s spiritual journey from a victim of child sexual exploitation to an advocate can be found in his memoir, Wretch, available on Amazon, iBooks, Barnes and Noble and through his publisher at Xulon Press. He is the founder of Starfish Ministries in Loveland, Colorado, a 501c3 non-profit and can be reached by email at sfhelp@zoho.com. Sean’s website is found at www.starfishcolorado.org and he can be found on Facebook at www.facebook.com/healingmenandboys. His YouTube channel is at www.youtube.com/channel/UCBmOvwlDzv2mCu_TDNhzH-w. Sean’s book is also in the process of being turned into a motion picture, and script writing is 1/3 the way complete. A Go Fund Me campaign is underway to support the project at: https://gofund.me/036014c7.