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Hello and welcome to other Monak. The Oxford Middle East podcast, my name names put his focus.

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And today I'm joined by Mike Rundell and Rose Johnson to discuss the dancing boys of Afghanistan.

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He covered this phenomenon's parallels in Persian poetry. What questions it raises about sexuality?

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Why is it so persistently certain sectors of society, country where women are hidden behind the burqa?

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Young boys take their place dancing to men as female substitutes.

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But Bachir Bazzi isn't just a bizarre form of entertainment. The boys are owned often and trapped in a cycle of sexual slavery and even murdered

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young boys who'd been abducted by the police commanders and were used to seven safety.

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Also, sex slaves raped by the.

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What exactly how exactly you control these very conflicted values within the Taliban, and that is what the people that we have developed now,

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a way to to move forward that will make Afghans responsible increasingly for their own future and for their own security.

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We could have got it right, but we put the worst people straight back into power.

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Rose, when when you started with the podcast,

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you pitched the idea to me that we should once discuss the dancing boys of Afghanistan and that we should discuss both of those.

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So would you do me a favour by explaining what it is?

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Yeah. But Gervasi is a praksis, somewhere between prostitution and trafficking in Afghanistan, wherein young, vulnerable boys have children.

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But specifically, boys are taken into these kind of dancing troupes where they dress up as women and they'll dance kind of private functions for

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specifically for men who are of quite who are who are very rich and also often got their money from less than less than reputable ways.

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And so there's a lot of dancing. They dress up as women. They wear makeup. They dance to traditional music.

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But there's also a lot of sexual abuse that happens as well on the side, the kind of off the parties.

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We thought that this be a really interesting topic to talk about because it ties together lots of different.

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Facets that are less spoken about in Afghanistan because this culture of the better body,

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which means some people translated as like boy play because bacha means like a child and Bosie,

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some people translate its meaning game, but it also, some people think came from the root Boston,

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which means to be can inflict afflicted with love for something and to be like entranced by it.

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And this goes back to culturally this practise in 12 13th century Persian and Afghani poetry,

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wherein you would have the beloved who is the objects of the kind of witness who will say right now, we'll go into this more bit later.

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We can go into the history bit later because it is like a contemporary problem, I think we can call it.

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But it does have, you know, calling it a history is going to be wrong.

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But we're going to at least go into the historical context of it.

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And we're sort of the inspiration might might come from.

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It's not like a direct descendant of this really ancient practise.

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It's very is a modern phenomenon.

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But there is the reason why we're discussing that the history is not to justify some kind of modern cultural practise,

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because it is just child abuse and trafficking.

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It's not a beautiful art form. It's it's horrific.

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But we began to discuss the cultural background to this practise in order to look at why child abuse has taken a specific form in Afghanistan,

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rather than try to justify it because it has cultural similarities and sort of historical parallels.

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But it is not necessarily there's no like a causal link link between the two, but there is definitely overlap in the background.

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And we're talking about parallels, I think.

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Yeah, it's really, really difficult to establish any sort of real causal link between the practise in Afghanistan today and any sort of practise,

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similar practise in sort of ancient Iran. I think one way you can immediately see the link, though, is in the language.

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So Showerhead Bosie, which is virtually synonymous with Bachi Bonzi or say Narz atomising,

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all apparent premodern Persian poetry pacifically just talks about precisely this or talks

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about a gazing on a beautiful young male and the beloved in this poetry can be a woman,

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but it is very often as well a young a young man and or a young boy, rather.

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And that at that time, unlike its manifestation in Afghanistan today and all of the horrible consequences of that, a little bit like, say,

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the relationship between poet or philosopher and his disciple in ancient Greece, it is simply one of admiration and love for your pupil.

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And I think reading a lot of this poetry in that sense does disconnect us from that,

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like sort of the issues and does disconnect us from this abhorrent practise in Afghanistan.

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But it is interesting to so think of it as a practise went by the same name.

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So just to clarify that in the same terms exist in old poetry.

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But the context in which it was used was very different. Is that correct?

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Yeah, I think it's that there was something very, very positive and very, very beautiful to the relationship between a disciple and his master.

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And I think just like in any in any context, in any era, say in the modern era with the relationship between disciple and guru.

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And we have those two brilliant Netflix documentaries to point to. I forget the name of one of them, but the other one is that is Bikram and Howard.

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Just unfortunately, when you have got a guru and you are a disciple to someone who you fully surrender yourself to, that can arise out of problems.

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And we see that in various different countries, various different cultures and in various different eras.

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Also, when we're discussing this, something that we have to be really careful about is to not look at it through this very Orientalists perspective.

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A kind of an example that kind of came up quite recently was during lockdown.

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The first lockdown there was a play I think was made in America called The Boy Who Don't Start on It.

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And it was put online. And so it got a lot more viewers and got a lot of backlash.

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Every highlights the kind of pitfalls that Western has fell into,

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because not only were there no Afghanis actually involved in creating this play or actors in it, but was the play about?

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So it's about Bachir Varzi. It's about a a boy who is a dancer and he has a I think he falls in love with another boy who is a dancer.

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But people have criticised it for saying that the relationship between him and his kind

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of master was overly romanticised rather than being shown as just straight up abuse,

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which which it is. And lots of people got lots of Afghan ego really upset because this is a practise that has has damaged has hurt so many people.

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And Western, as we're looking at it through this lens of it's this kind of beautiful native culture that is so like historical and beautiful.

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And it really reflects how so often narratives about Afghanistan are told by foreigners, which is actually what I'm doing right now.

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But yeah, that narratives are told by by foreigners, not by Afghanis, by foreign journalists in Afghanistan or or whatever,

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but that we just need to have more spaces for Afghanis to tell their own personal experiences of this.

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And yeah, I'm not justify it as some kind of indigenous art because it's not.

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I think even just going back, I would add about the historical tradition of shorthaired Bosie, which then manifested itself in poetry.

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It's so easy for us to sort of want to create all of these links between, say, Archibald's, you know, Khalistan today, raddest.

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I think that was that was about that could be a promise and say between the poetry

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of that time or to sort of reread the poetry in a sort of problematic way that,

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say, people who engaged in such acts will also say we're also we're also gay.

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And I think that has translated into a lot of homophobia in Iran.

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Or Brosius said that it shouldn't be like romanticise to not see those looked out in the necessarily Western way.

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But I think many Westerners would be very tempted to look at it in a very homosexual kind of perspective and say,

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oh, it's a homosexual issue between the man and his and his servant. That is.

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Is that actually the case? Yes. So that was another thing that people got really upset about was the idea that

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this is the battered body was some kind of manifestation of queer culture.

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A lot of queer Afghanis came out and condemned this because it really isn't.

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I mean, firstly, it's just simply it's just not relevant or helpful to discuss really if the people who are doing this abuse are actually gay.

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But also, you know, historically, there's a horrific pitfall where people conflate homosexuality with child abuse.

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And it's been a way to justify the oppression of queer people throughout history.

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You know, I think in the USSR it was. Sexuality was made illegal because it was conflated with paedophilia.

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It has a lot of people have persecuted queer people out of fear that their abusers have children.

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And then you see it in, you know, conservative organisations in the US as well, like Christina Asians.

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I read a study that's had the paedophiles on actually more likely to be gay or straight, and they actually have no preference beyond age.

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I just think seeing this is a manifestation of homosexuality is just playing into homophobic tropes that are used to oppress queer people.

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And so it's not strictly relevant to discuss if they are actually.

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How then does that square with what makes out earlier about looking on to the beloved?

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Was that you? That was Max. I could I could add actually one thing to what Rosett said, which I do 100 percent agree with.

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And it's just that, yeah, there's this precisely this.

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If you took if you go back to the history of, say, even Shorthair to Bosnia at the time of ancient Iran,

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it doesn't correspond to any modern definition we have or understanding in the west of homosexuality or paedophilia.

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And the problem is, so many of our discussions are going from the beginning from that premise.

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And I think that's the problem that then presents itself. Was not looking at them in the most accurate way possible.

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But is it then the case that the relationship was lost between old literature?

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I know an old poetry. Was that a very platonic relationship?

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Very often it was. I think it was. There is this there is this sense in a lot of this ancient poetry,

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which was also a lot of the time very mystical, had a sort of Sufi background and context to it,

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where love and admiration for one's pupil, one's disciple, which was often a young boy because women weren't as present in society at that time,

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was almost seen as being higher than that love for women.

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And it's bringing us closer to bring us closer to true beloved, which in a lot of which in a lot of instances was God,

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even if I think it's Dick Davis, would have us believe that Rumi wasn't wasn't a Muslim.

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So that's the sort of truth we're playing around with. Yeah. I mean, I could try and give it my best shot at reading a couple of lines by Sayadi,

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where he references this particular practise of shorthaired by Xue Nawzad about.

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I'm apologising in advance to all Iranians. So I really don't know how to pronounce these words.

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But anyways, I'll give my best shot. Hamid Bornand Commander sabs of Fat Dort.

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I'm just natural. Do you get a haven subsidy? Several Euro for non Persian speakers.

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Society loves the cross of the heart, as we all know. Unlike animals that just love the grass.

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So the heart refers to which literally means line. But it's referring to sort of the most, Stosh.

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That would be the sort of very faint moustache would be appearing on the face of a young beloved.

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And there are other lines where Satyarthi sort of writes of engaging in this practise of shorthaired by.

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But he also reflects on the limits of such passions to critiquing them when they turn into simply a

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problematic manifestation of a carnal passion and one that I guess if we would see today as problematic.

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But people were critical of essentially what I'm trying to say is that people then were also critical of

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when those relationships became more than something simply beautiful and platonic and as sharing knowledge.

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I think that is important, too, to concede, because otherwise we're trying to essentially say that all of Iran's ancient poets were paedophiles.

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And I think that I don't think I would be a fairly radical decision to do something about it.

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The erotic kind of imagery used in so much of this poetry, it's so masterful.

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Well, some people would argue it's a metaphor. Would you agree with that argument?

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Because I don't know anything about us. I don't know what to think. So tourism, Yorgos, is a few numbers.

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Well, my Louis' experience, I think.

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Yeah, I think it's not. Yeah. I think it tows the line. I think it's not literally referring to necessarily sleeping with young boys,

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but I think it is playing off their cism that they would have experienced in their lives, certainly with their wives or or with other people.

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But I don't I don't think they necessarily all writing about having sex with the police who worked in the courts.

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I think it's a mixture perhaps of their own sexuality.

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And that's kind of fun for the audience to enjoy. I mean, it's very useful.

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I mean, everyone should read some some Roomi or so, and that is Hoffer's because they are phenomenal.

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Yet in this metaphor, as everything is kind of a matter for really impassioned poetry and quite dense twisting,

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turning, sometimes difficult to unpick metaphors. And so it's hard to say really what people are necessarily trying to talk about.

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But it didn't say nothing about the fact that the line of the small little beating started, because people often use that for women as well, you see.

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And a lot of pictures of women in the harem from the earliest pictures that we have of the harm in Iran.

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A lot of women have moustaches. And it wasn't seen as ugly in the way that a lot of people now exclusively male.

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In that case, yeah. Exactly. So the Hap's doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be a man,

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but a facial hair is actually really important in this distinction between if it's okay to sexualise a boy or not,

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because and you get this also in an ancient Greek and ancient Roman culture.

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But you also get it in this kind of bacha bazi in the classical sense and in the

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modern practise wherein some sexual desire isn't seen as a kind of binary of.

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Homosexuality and heterosexuality. It's kind of like a spectrum and sexual desire is sexual desire, regardless of the gender.

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And while certain acts like sodomy is like taboo and some people would see same sex and activity as irreligious,

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the idea of homosexuality being a concrete entity is just this modern and it's not reasonably fit.

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And sexuality is instead defined by active and passive roles.

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And if you are playing a passive role during sex that is seen as humiliating and which is quite humiliating for women.

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But it's also, if you are a grown man, humiliating. Whereas it's not humiliating if you're a boy.

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And the mark of when it is unacceptable is when you kind of grow a moustache or bear.

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It's like when you probably get facial hair. You hit puberty. That's when it starts becoming humiliating for you to be seen as being passive.

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And and that's when it starts becoming much more culturally unacceptable in this very specific cultural context,

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not generally throughout the whole country, but that kind of set for.

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It's almost like it's not gay. As long as you haven't got a moustache, really like it.

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Just before we move on to sort of other things, I think just going back to what Rose was saying earlier about how it is automatical.

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I completely agree with that invasion perpetrated by a classical Persian poetry is so, so beautiful for that particular reason.

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I would just add one more example of that, which is the sort of mystical aspect to it, which I mentioned before.

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But I think it's also particularly important in the context of these relationship

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when a poet like Rumi and his writing saying his eyes and which is a particular form

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of Persian poetry and specifically used in in love poetry when he is writing about

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trams Tabrizi or writing about these particular sort of or about NAS Arabize,

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you'll shorthaired Bosie again as emblematic of an ideal and almost pure,

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a form of love that doesn't have to border by any stretch imagination to anything more than simply being

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platonic and an admiration for the beauty of a young boy that is emulating that is emulating God.

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It's just the place is just a particularly important role in sort of Sufis for the mystical practise of trying to,

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in one sense, get closer to the ultimate beloved that is God and in another sense, trying to almost.

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And this is an idea that I'm particularly interested in, is essentially trying to reach a stage of an ego death either.

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I've got the Persian word in front of me, but I'm not quite sure if this would be how you pronounce it.

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But I think it's Fanaa in a Sufi practise, the sense of killing one's ego.

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And this actually reminds me of a passage. What does a killing on CECO involve?

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Is this a really good question?

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I think it's almost you could almost look at it linguistically when you see and say Sufi literature, actually, or Buddhist literature.

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I am say I am God. And I think it is that sense in which there is no longer any boundary, dualistic boundary between, say, you and the outside world.

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That is something that I've read a little bit about in Buddhist philosophy, but also now in sort of Sufi mystical literature.

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But I suppose in this case, are they and the targets of love which was achieved, that's a good.

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Well, I think it's what what what I'm trying to I think what I'm trying to say is that this poetry

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where they're expressing their love for the beloved is almost seen as it's a transitional phase.

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It's bringing them that step closer.

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Rumi by writing about Shamsi Tabrizi, who's, well, this is an example of a transgenerational same sex relationship.

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But even you can use as an example, or I could say when somebody is writing specifically about Nesat,

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about in shorthaired Buzzi, there is a sense in which they're trying to get as close as possible to God's true love.

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And to do that, they get it right. Poetry about sort of about the beloved who's often tends to be male.

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It's that sort of transitional phase that trying to use language to take you to something that is ineffable, which will always essentially fail.

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But it's bringing you closer than if you were to not be writing that poetry in some sense.

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At least that's how I've how I've read it. It's just sort of interesting to stop on.

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I think I want to talk about women. If we can, because it is sort of the elephant in the room in this case that, you know,

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we focus on the boys in this case because the women are present in this context.

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Is. Is there a historical reason that women didn't play as big a role in the expression of love as as as boys?

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I mean, it's not it's not really my area. I don't know that. I don't know much about it.

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But I think women were historically more hidden away.

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And I think there were definitely like female dancers and singers.

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But I think at moments when perhaps the culture got more conservative, they went into the background a bit more on the less visible.

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And I think at the moment, I think that is the case in Afghanistan, where women are still caught in the house.

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And just to a larger extent, they're very hidden. So that's kind of the reason why these kind of gang leaders, these boxes that own all these boys.

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Maybe that's the reason why they choose boys, because they wouldn't be able to publicly display their women for the same effect,

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because using these having these boys is a form of demonstrating your wealth,

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but also your kind of high status as you kind of linking yourself to this historical high culture, performance art of having boys dancing,

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because it is a very public spectacle of having these boys dressed very elaborately dancing and singing.

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And so it is a way to demonstrate your wealth. And so they need to be able to be seen.

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Therefore, they have to be boys because you couldn't do it with girls.

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That's a very good transition into sort of the modern context of that, because it happens now in Afghanistan.

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And as anyone who's read the news knows, Afghanistan is not in a very good state at the moment.

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And one reason the boys have stayed is because women are not allowed to be

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seen in public and in such a way wearing these clothes and dancing like this.

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But another reason is that simple and very sad fact that the boys, especially in Pashtun tribal areas in southern Afghanistan.

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They are incredibly poor. After four decades of war, which means that by selling themselves into this situation,

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they do become the breadwinners of the family, which, you know, is an incredibly sad state of being.

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But that's where we are. There's a brilliant documentary that anyone who's listened to this, if the interest in learning more.

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Does it bring documentary in some of the BBC to the dancing boys of Afghanistan in

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that they follow a particular kind of warlord type character ratio is backgrounders.

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And some of the boys that he has has in his group and you see him kind of pick up a new boy and

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he literally just he sees a very young boy out on the street who is obviously very poor and kind

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of takes him in and starts training him because it seems that this little dance school where

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they have different kind of mentors of different boys who are kind of further up in the chain,

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who teach him how to do this stuff and that the boy doesn't look very pleased with any of that.

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It's clearly not his where he wanted to go.

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But you also see this kind of harrowing moment where one of the older boys who is quite successful, he's getting to the age where,

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you know, he's probably hitting puberty and he's getting too old to be a dancer because he's not turning into a man.

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And so he he says how he wants to set up his own dancing group and he can kind of see how the cycle of trauma kind of repeats people.

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Who is likely to abuse people who are abused go into helping perpetuate this abuse because it's the only skill set that they've got.

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And yet they're there in their social situation now. And it's kind of hard to come back from that, really.

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Yeah, I do think on what you'd just to add to what you said,

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wrote about how boys who had been abused in this fashion then perpetuate this particular horrible practise.

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It almost reminds you of how this wasn't always problematic in amongst sort of Sufis in the classical period.

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I remember reading about how these relationships between Masters and the disciples would repeat over generations.

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And as we now know, that would have been that could have been for the better.

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That could also have been for the worse. And there is definitely something to be said about how these of these imbalanced

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relationships premised on power can just lead to really problematic outcomes.

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Also, I think just taking this back a little bit, too, also, you were saying about the boys acting out of a financial necessity,

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but also on what we were saying about women's role in society.

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I think I came across was of a particular Afghani soldier who said that with regard to this.

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So this is under the Taliban. This is like with regards to taking regard this practise about you, Buzzy, he says you cannot take wives ever review.

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You can you cannot take a wife with you to a party, for instance.

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But a boy you can take anywhere, which I think is just such a harrowing and almost quite revealing statement.

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But if it's very well, it's well, Rosa early and that, you know, the boys can be seen in public wildly, I suppose all the daughters cannot be collopy.

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But also another thing which is quite, you know,

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shed some light on the situation is the fact that 48 percent of the boys who are part of this are illiterate,

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according to a study by the Afghani Human Rights Commission. What is possibly the most surprising is that 86 percent of the.

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Of the pimps, I guess you can almost call them, claimed that their boys are happy,

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but 81 percent of the boys surveyed claimed they are very unhappy and are forced into the situation.

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And it is very much about power relations, so something we forgot to mention, which is also very important,

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is that these pimps tend to have very close relationships with the security services.

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And it's also something you see in that BBC documentary is that one of them brags about the fact

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that he can have 100 policemen come to where he is within a few minutes because of his connexions.

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And it basically shows that it's very, very difficult for the boys to do anything to solve the situation because the state,

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quite literally is against them gaining their freedom of gaining the quality of life which they want to get.

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Once they have fallen into this situation, I mean, just to add to that, actually.

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I think I'm not wrong in saying that for a lot of these, I would go with pen.

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I mean, it seems to have a specific connotation that doesn't quite fit this.

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But also,

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I think it's the most appropriate way to use their status in society is elevated by possessing or by owning as many boys as possible in a way that is,

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I think, particularly unique to the situation in that it allows them to achieve a certain societal clout.

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If I can put it, put it as such, and I think that is clearly an issue that I am not quite sure how.

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I mean, grassroots organisations are even allowed to operate or if there was even any true opposition to this,

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I even know how you'd begin to say tackle that particular facet,

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which actually could be quite interesting to maybe talk about how war and Western intervention has actually helped perpetuate this particular problem,

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has helped worsen this particular problem of that your body?

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Yeah, no, that that's a good point, because, you know, Afghanistan has been at war since the late 70s when the Soviet Union invaded.

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And then after that, the Taliban came to power in 1996 and.

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You know, but Shabbos is legal now in 2020. Almost one in 21.

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But it was also legal when the Taliban came to power.

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But the problem was that when the Taliban took over the government, they completely neglected the social services and basic government functions,

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which led to total societal collapse within within Afghanistan,

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which has then created a whole host of problems, for example, the economics problems I mentioned earlier.

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And much of the Afghanis economy is based on the informal sector.

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And then when the Americans came in with their very noble intentions of getting rid

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of the threat of the Taliban and improving the situation of women in in Afghanistan,

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they did that often by replacing the Taliban with tribal leaders more than almost any other policy they have had in Afghanistan.

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It probably shows their lack of prior research before they decided to go to war,

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because a consistent problem was that the people who they would put in power,

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the people they would make police commissioners, for example, these would be people from tribal background who would participate in Bashur policy.

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And these then would become politically influential people.

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And through those policies, the Americans have basically institutionalised to a certain extent.

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But Shahbazian, even though they you know, obviously I don't think any American would go that it's a good policy.

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They have prioritised that major strategic aims in Afghanistan over OKL humanitarian goals,

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and that has caused extreme problems with with the acceptance many local Afghanis have of the American occupation,

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because they have put these people to do something which is, you know, morally repugnant.

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They've put those people into power and protect them only because they are pro-American.

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There was also this case where a private military company,

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in order to curry favour with their local counterparts, hired a teenage boy to dance at a party.

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And when this was leaked by some activists in Afghanistan, the company didn't really do much about it.

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The only thing they did was called into question the war, the management oversights,

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which I think is the most extreme euphemism I've ever heard for participating in something which shouldn't be encouraged in any way shape.

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And, you know, obviously, this is not a podcast for American bashing.

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But I do think there has been like a total failure in that case of understanding how

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local or how strategic objectives can be helped by doing a good job locally as well.

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And it demonstrates how incompetence is just complicity.

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How does corruption exacerbate is? Well, you know, it's something that touches on that a lot as well, that, you know,

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these people tend to be fairly well connected to the security services.

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And it is the case that in countries without strong institutions, the security services are the most powerful,

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almost the government, because if you have the guns, people will do what you say.

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So when if people can be bribed to look away or participate in the activities, then of course, they're not going to do anything about it.

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And due to the total lack of functioning governments in Afghanistan and the fact that the Taliban is now resurging,

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it is there is very little traditional room to deal with the problem,

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because the only way you'd solve with it in the West through the lawsuits or that possibility simply doesn't exist in Afghanistan.

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Sadly, I think for me. And it goes back to your seven years, which I think is a really, really, really good way of looking at a situation,

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which is how in incompetence does translate into complicity in this particular instance.

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But then there is the bigger question raised of which we most certainly cannot try an answer here,

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which is how would one or how would an organisation,

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perhaps a country with noble intentions, want to go about fixing this situation,

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go about wanting to eradicate, let's say, specifically focus on the practise of bacha bars?

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How would one even begin to undertake that within the plethora of problems that have been exacerbated, worsened and then made more problematic?

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I think it's just. It's such a this is such a difficult question, and I think this.

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I mean, sort of underpinning it all is, again, as we mentioned before,

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how these boys are acting out of a financial necessity, how they are the breadwinners in their families,

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and if there are no other way out for the people and as we've already talked about as well,

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women are forced to stay at home and unable to work and and have not been emancipated.

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In that sense. I it's very difficult to feel at all hopeful in this particular situation.

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Max, I remember you said before that was that was the case enough in Pakistan.

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Am I was here about to talk about how is Pakistan's policies towards emancipating women?

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Because this practise about your body, which to some extent had roots in the Persian Empire.

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Having said that, as far was to to a large extent eradicated by emancipating women, which I thought was interesting.

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I mean, it definitely Calley's contributed to, I don't know the degree of causality,

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but emancipating women definitely had a positive impact on eradicating that practise and a very staunch opposition to by the government,

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which as we've already established. Is it a possibility in modern day Afghanistan?

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The problem, I think in the Pakistan case, and this goes back to what you were saying, Rose,

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and what I touched upon when we were talking about homosocial relations relationships in ancient Greece will be in Rome, will be in Persia,

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is how the Soviet Union and specifically in this case Pakistan,

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have always been very quick to just see a practise with such transgenerational relationships,

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is as homosexual and then very quickly to designate them as human and to be homophobic in that way.

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Designate anybody who would have engaged in such acts as paedophilic, which is not entirely wrong.

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But again, it's allowed, unfortunately,

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homophobia to perpetuate in Eastern Europe and in Central Asia and in these countries in a way that is very, very unfortunate.

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Even if they have helped eradicate this purpose, this practise of Bacha Bisi, by emancipating that women to a greater extent than Afghanistan,

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I would add, I mean, to be difficult to do worse to the worst job in Afghanistan at the moment, despite all the problems that are there.

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But as in another problem is that, you know, if you're trying to solve it,

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either the boys or the pimps or both, you know, they get isolated socially because of what to do,

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because despite how prevalent it can sometimes seem in Afghanistan, it's not something which the whole country thinks is acceptable.

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It's seen as negative. It's seen as a negative thing to participate in this.

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The problem is, as we mentioned earlier, that when a person or when a boy has taken part in it,

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there's often a lot of shame involved and they don't want to re-enter society and have it be known that they have have been a but supposedly,

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which creates a problematic situation where once, you know, by by trying to do something about it, you give it more attention.

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But by giving it more attention to the results of this, people are socially isolated,

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which forces them to stay within their very problematic social and economic context.

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There is basically no solution to it other than creating the foundation suffocates society within within Afghanistan.

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And that's something I think Western, though, should not try to do at the moment after the fairly poor track record Western countries have in Iraq,

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in Libya and Afghanistan and wherever else will have been active in the last two or three decades.

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Are there any great grassroots organisations that are helping at the moment?

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What's currently being done? You know, there is a bit.

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But as as I mentioned earlier,

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the fact that the legal and political situation in Afghanistan is not conducive to free speech or challenging the powers that be.

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So there is more activism in Afghanistan, which tends to focus on socio economic problems.

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And I do think that's a good thing, because we if you solve the socio economic problems,

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you also remove the very first background where these boys can be found due to a lack of economic possibilities.

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And these access tend to transcend ethnic and religious lines in order to develop a better future, which I think is encouraging.

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But obviously, there's a huge amount of interest through institutional inertia to deal with before any changes can be made.

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And the activists which are involved in trying to uncover suppose supposedly they.

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To what might be one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, because all of them get death threats for their work.

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And there was a case relatively recently where two activists had found videos of this happening in a Facebook group

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that published them so that more people could see that they were then taken into protective custody by the police,

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which sounds good until in that protective custody.

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They were forced to make a video where they were so recanting their statements and they were saying that the videos to had were doctored.

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And it's obviously that they did this under duress and under the threat of torture, severe physical abuse.

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And it just shows how deep the problem is.

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And I do think that the best chance is not necessarily to treat lots of try to solve

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Buster Posey on its own because it cannot be taken out of its socio economic context.

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I think also it actually reminds me of.

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And there was this interesting article that talked about this Navy reporting in Chechnya and the difficulties that she faced.

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And she was actually an economy, her name, but she was unfortunately shot during this particular work.

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But I think the one of those sort of horrible things that she uncovered when reporting on both wars and Russia's involvement in Chechnya.

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And the reason why I think it's relevant here is just how official government forces and you've mentioned the police here.

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We've talked about influential tribal leaders and to some extent other high ranking officials, how they keep perpetuating this particular problem.

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We mentioned that the Batchelor's out of the Batchelor's have to, unfortunately, act out of some sort of financial necessity.

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But from the moment that the government institutions are corrupt, to that extent,

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there's just no real possibility for change until those government institutions, I guess, are no longer as corrupt.

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And I guess that's the perennial question of how do you go about ameliorating such institutions or changing them,

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deposing them in a so successful way in a way that empowers the people in those countries.

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And it's so difficult. Think about at least I guess to some extent, even by talking about this particular issue,

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which I had known very, very little about, had almost never even heard of before.

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Various have mentioned it to me by just raising awareness of problems, you can in some way shape what you can in some way,

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shape the dialogue and a discussion that can sometimes lead to action. So I guess that could be something to be somewhat hopeful about.

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But again, it's it's it's it's a glimmer. It's a very sad day. It's a faint glimmer of hope.

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And war is one of those sort of most barbaric and horrific things, horrific situations I've had to read about.

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I can finish the episode, but seeing probably with the most horrific thing,

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I it's all my research on this, and that is the role the better bosses have in the Taliban.

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Because as as we mentioned earlier, the Taliban had outlawed such a policy.

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But after the American invasion, I think the rules went out of the window for them.

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What they do is that they recruit these these boys who are desperate for money.

379
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And the Taliban then uses these boys, in effect, as Trojan horses to infiltrate police stations because as we've mentioned,

380
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how this phenomena is very prevalent amongst the security services.

381
00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:15,050
And what the deal basically, as I said, these boys and have to sleep with these policemen.

382
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And at night when everybody's sleeping, the boys have to open the door, let the Taliban in, and the Taliban will then kill these policemen.

383
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And apparently hundreds of soldiers and policemen have have died this way.

384
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The absolute insanity of this whole situation is that these boys are often abused and that makes them an easy recruitment target for the Taliban.

385
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And that allows this whole process to happen.

386
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On the other hand, the police has gone completely morally bankrupt and threatens boys who are not affiliated with the Taliban.

387
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Policemen will say that they are affiliated with the Taliban and say if if you run away from us,

388
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we'll tell everyone you're a Taliban affiliate and then we'll kill you.

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And because of that, the basically forces, the boys who are not Taliban affiliated to stay with the policemen.

390
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Kind of one of the worst things I've had in a really long time. Yes, completely hopeless.

391
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There was a police sorry,

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an activist in Afghanistan who said that the Taliban have figured out the biggest weakness of the police forces is a bunch of Bozie.

393
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If the situation for this was could be any worse. I do know I cannot imagine how that would be adopted.

394
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This story is sort of so horrifying, I think, by virtue of now being used as almost weapons of war in some sense,

395
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as opposed to just as if their lives hadn't been bad enough by being engaged in this self-perpetuating,

396
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vicious cycle of what is essentially prostitution. Now they're being you have got a bonding exercise neverthought improving that that position.

397
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It's it's ah, it's horrific. Thank you for listening to this episode of Almanack.

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The Oxford Middle East podcast. Join us next time. We'll examine the reasons behind Lebanon's ongoing political and economic.

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Element act as a student for an initiative ultimately sent Indian bursty of office.

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The opinions expressed in the podcast are not in any way represent the official opinions of the University of the Middle East.

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Editor's note. So you'll just focus with Lily.

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Felix Walker. Michael Memory Hauser. Max Randall.

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Frederico Brookover. Emman Farrah. Rose Johnson.