The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan will show you a different side of the Afghani warlord. By day and night, hardened commanders and former mujahideen enjoy freedoms they did not have under the Taliban. They sell imported automobiles and drink soft drinks. But in private gatherings, often held at night, they engage in the old practice of recruiting and making young boys their personal sex slaves.
Bacha Bazi – or ‘boy play’ – was banned by the Taliban, but implementing the ban was difficult considering its popularity. Every warlord had to have one. At night, young boys dance to increasingly drunken audiences – one of whom gets to take the boy home and sodomize him. They are recruited as early as the age of 11, but can find their ‘careers’ snuffed out by 18. Nobody wants a dancing man.
Afghanistan’s elected government has technically outlawed the practice, but execution is flimsy – in one scene, the police drive a former commander home along with his boy toy for the night.
The documentary has a set of unapologetic interviews with the boy’s many masters. All are candid accounts, by people who wouldn’t blink twice before raping a young child – and killing them when they’re too old to be entertaining. The only interviewee who was not candid was a 11-year-old boy himself who was whispered a series of curt answers to give the interviewer by his master.
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