This morning’s paper has an Associated Press article about the sale of children by Afghan families as a way to provide food for their remaining children. The story talks mostly about young girls, as young as 6, being sold into marriage for as little as $200 to $300. The prospective groom’s family purchasing them in advance of a marriage that would not take place until the girl was older (at least 9 or 10).

The caption under the second photo in the article is of a family wanting to sell their 8-year-old son so as to be able to feed the rest of the family. Muslim law does not allow adoptions. A girl can be married into a family, but a boy cannot become a member of a family that buys him. He can only become a servant (or slave in the recent past).

A 1953 issue of the Anti-Slavery Reporter noted that young boys in rural areas were sometimes taken as payment for debts. They were then castrated so that they could be inside the inner portions of the house where the women and girls of the family were secluded, even if their use was to be physical labor in the fields.

I was at a conference session where Louis Dupree’s film An Afghan Village (filmed in 1972) was screened and Dupree was present to answer questions about it. There is a scene in the film with a dancing boy in the village coffee shop, with men and boys of the village watching and enjoying his performance. The dancing boy looks to be in his late teens. When asked about the scene, Dupree stated that the only unusual part was that the boy had not been castrated as most dancing boys of the period were. He was “owned” by a truck driver and performed in villages where the driver had business.

The article is available on-line, and with more photographs than were published in my local newspaper. The photo I refer to above is number 17 in the on-line version:

https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan- ... 6a74292967 (https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan- ... 6a74292967)

This is really distressing to hear. I used to work with Afghan refugees, and the state of that country weighs heavily on me.

From a sociological perspective I think you are right that how things unfold deserves international attention -- to find any way of improving humanitarian conditions, of course, but also because the social contracts and beliefs at work in Afghanistan at the moment are at play elsewhere in the world too.

When cultures find themselves unable to feed their people, ways of administrating overpopulation (the other way of seeing under-resource) vary wildly, and it is possible to see a lot of human history through this lens. Orlando Patterson's ethnographical and philosophical work around slavery distinguished different types of structures of both intrusive and extrusive slave-making relating to demographic planning. Islam scripturally is very expansionist population-wise, with edicts against castration and homosexuality, and edicts in favour of incorporating outsiders into the general reproducing population. Since that early period, however, cultural practices have varied a huge amount, with Muslim North Africa a gay safe haven up till the reactionary (Cold War) scriptural literalism of the 1970s onwards. ... In the context of all these conflicting pasts, as well as pressures to react against US/UK forces' perceived cultures, what the Taliban will do is a mystery to me.

Anyway, if non-consensual castration does emerge in the forthcoming famine in Afghanistan, whether to do with demographic control or to do with taboos about mixed-family households, it will be very vexing to our community in terms of raking up historic assumptions (and, of course, a terrible human rights abuse).

The thing is though, that whatever commentators in the West say, that might create a pressure for the Taliban to do the opposite. So, one must hope that alternative and reform movements dismantle aggressive fundamentalism from within the major rival centres of Saudi and Iran, and restore the more humane and tolerant mode of the middle-past. Meanwhile, if there is any way of preventing a humanitarian nightmare from unfolding, that would be excellent. To do that would probably involve channelling food and medical aid through intermediary countries, and not expecting to be recognised for it.

It is sad of course what happens in Afghanistan, but we must admit that we are not gods and can not cure everything and everywhere. That was the main reason why Afghanistan was left alone. Finally. Our resources and abilities are limited.

erikboy (imported) wrote: Tue Jan 04, 2022 11:03 am It is sad of course what happens in Afghanistan, but we must admit that we are not gods and can not cure everything and everywhere. That was the main reason why Afghanistan was left alone. Finally. Our resources and abilities are limited.

I totally agree!

Moreover, A. somewhat resembles a "black hole".

Several countries have tried to improve the well-being of the common population of this country, but all attempts have been unsuccessful.