Taleban, by Pueros
Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2002 5:47 pm
Pueros has done a very nice job with his story Taleban. Well-written, and certainly timely. Possibly even true.
Bedboys and eunuchs were a part of traditional Afghan culture, and the Taliban DID execute (usually by hanging) some of those caught kidnapping boys (as well as girls) for bed use. I have not been able to discover the fate of the boys, however. This was very early in the Taliban regime. By a bit later, the Taliban themselves were kidnapping girls, though I have no evidence that they were still kidnapping boys for sexual use. Given the long Afghan tradition, I would tend to expect that they did.
Prior to the Soviet invasion, many of the dancing boys in Afghan coffee shops had been castrated. The anthropologist Louis Dupree notes that one of the dancing boys he interviewed near Mazar-i-Sharif had NOT been castrated, as if this were unusual.
Dupree in his writings on northern Afghanistan also mentions boys from poor families who were given to landlords as debt repayments, to be castrated and used as bed boys, though always before puberty. There is also a note in the Anti-Slavery Reporter in the 1960s of debt castration of 10 to 12 year-olds. (My copy is somewhere in storage, but it was in a special issue on slavery and the drug trade in Afghanistan.)
Bedboys and eunuchs were a part of traditional Afghan culture, and the Taliban DID execute (usually by hanging) some of those caught kidnapping boys (as well as girls) for bed use. I have not been able to discover the fate of the boys, however. This was very early in the Taliban regime. By a bit later, the Taliban themselves were kidnapping girls, though I have no evidence that they were still kidnapping boys for sexual use. Given the long Afghan tradition, I would tend to expect that they did.
Prior to the Soviet invasion, many of the dancing boys in Afghan coffee shops had been castrated. The anthropologist Louis Dupree notes that one of the dancing boys he interviewed near Mazar-i-Sharif had NOT been castrated, as if this were unusual.
Dupree in his writings on northern Afghanistan also mentions boys from poor families who were given to landlords as debt repayments, to be castrated and used as bed boys, though always before puberty. There is also a note in the Anti-Slavery Reporter in the 1960s of debt castration of 10 to 12 year-olds. (My copy is somewhere in storage, but it was in a special issue on slavery and the drug trade in Afghanistan.)
