Great moments in American diplomacy.

Wiki leaks reveals how American contractors negotiated with Afghan policeman by bribing them with little boys.

US State Dept. called ownership of Afghan 'dancing boys' a 'culturally sanctioned form of male rape'


The Afghanistan interior minister was so concerned about an incident where DynCorp, a US contractor charged with training Afghan police, bought drugs and paid for young "dancing boys" that he asked the US embassy to work to "quash" the story, a secret US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks indicates.


In Afghan society, "dancing boys" are little boys dressed as girls, commonly abused and kept by some men as possessions.

As Joel Brinkley reported for SFGate.com, many Afghan Pashtun tribal men take boys age 9 to 15 as lovers. The US State Department recently called "dancing boys" a "widespread, culturally sanctioned form of male rape."

Sociologists and anthropologists say the problem results from perverse interpretation of Islamic law. Women are simply unapproachable. Afghan men cannot talk to an unrelated woman until after proposing marriage. Before then, they can't even look at a woman, except perhaps her feet. Otherwise she is covered, head to ankle.

"How can you fall in love if you can't see her face," 29-year-old Mohammed Daud told reporters. "We can see the boys, so we can tell which are beautiful."

Damn those burquas!

Here is the SF Gate story, which I have I linked to previously.

More from the story:

According to the newly leaked cable, the then-Ministor of Interior Hanif Atmar worried that if the story became public then lives would be in danger. Atmar also warned that a video of the incident might be released by the media,


"On the Kunduz Regional Training Center (RTC) DynCorp event of April 11 (reftel), Atmar reiterated his insistence that the U.S. try to quash any news article on the incident or circulation of a video connected with it," the cable said.

"Atmar said he insisted the journalist be told that publication would endanger lives. His request was that the U.S. quash the article and release of the video," the cable continued. "Amb Mussomeli responded that going to the journalist would give her the sense that there is a more terrible story to report."

Atmar then disclosed the arrest of two Afghan National Police (ANP) and nine other Afghans (including RTC language assistants) as part of an MoI investigation into Afghan "facilitators" of the event. The crime he was pursuing was "purchasing a service from a child," which in Afghanistan is illegal under both Sharia law and the civil code, and against the ANP Code of Conduct for police officers who might be involved. He said he would use the civil code and that, in this case, the institution of the ANP will be protected, but he worried about the image of foreign mentors.

A July 2009 article by The Washington Post mentioned the incident but appeared to minimize the nature of such a practice.

I wonder how much of the "soft peddling" of this story is due to American taboos about depicting homosexuality as predatory and abusive.