Inside Afghanistan, jihadists look for sex slaves

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To the Taliban, withdrawal of US and NATO troops is seen as ‘victory of Islam’. They consider it as defeat of the ‘enemies of Islam’. So, these victors now are hunting door-to-door in the captured areas to find young girls, who would become sex slaves of the jihadists. According to media reports, jihadist commanders have ordered imams in the mosques to bring them lists of unmarried girls and women aged from 12 to 45 for the soldiers of Islam to marry because they view them as ghanimat (spoils of war) – to be divided amongst the jihadists.

About “spoils of war”, Qur’an says: “Forbidden to you are your mothers, and your daughters, and your sisters, and your father’s sisters, and your mother’s sisters, and your brother’s daughters and your sister’s daughters, and your foster-mothers, and your foster-sisters, and your mothers-in-law, and your stepdaughters who are under your protection…And all married women except those whom your right hands possess.” (verse 4:23-4).

It also says: “The believers are successful indeed, who are humble in their prayers, and who shun vain conversation, and who give alms, and who guard their private parts, except from their wives or those that their right hands possess, for then they are not blameworthy…” (verse 23:1-6).

While under the international laws, treating girls and women as sex slaves or “spoils of war” is totally forbidden, radical Islamic militancy outfits reject to obey such laws, while according to all the jihadist groups, democracy and “man-made laws” are considered as obsolete and “laws of Satan”.

According to The Daily Mail, Taliban fighters are going door-to-door and forcibly marrying girls as young as 12 and forcing them into sex slavery as they seize vast swathes of the Afghanistan from government forces.

Fighters have then been going door-to-door to claim their ‘prizes’, even looking through the wardrobes of families to establish the ages of girls before forcing them into a life of sexual servitude.

The women and girls’ brutal treatment is just the latest sign of Afghanistan’s military collapse, which has prompted the Afghan president to sack his top commander.

One female journalist described fleeing a city in northern Afghanistan – which she did not name – and going into hiding with her uncle for fear the Islamists would hunt her down and execute her after gang rape.

The 22-year-old said she fled under the noses of Taliban gunmen while disguised beneath a burqa and went with her unclear to a nearby village – but was forced to flee again after informants told the militants of her presence.

According to media reports, Taliban fighters are not only looking for unmarried girls and women, they also are hunting young boys for engaging them into Bacha bāzī (play boy).

Bacha bāzī is a slang term in some parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan for a custom created in Afghanistan involving child sexual abuse between older men and young adolescent males or boys, who are called dancing boys. The custom is connected to sexual slavery and child prostitution. In the 21st century, Bacha bāzī is reportedly practiced in various parts of Afghanistan and Northwestern Pakistan. Force and coercion are common, and security officials state they are unable to end such practices because many of the men involved in bacha bāzī -related activities are powerful and well-armed warlords.

In 2015, The New York Times reported that US soldiers serving in Afghanistan were instructed by their commanders to ignore child sexual abuse being carried out by Afghan security forces, except “when rape is being used as a weapon of war”. American soldiers have been instructed not to intervene—in some cases, not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases, according to interviews and court records. But the US soldiers have been increasingly troubled that instead of weeding out pedophiles, the US military was arming them against the Taliban and placing them as the police commanders of villages—and doing little when they began abusing children.

Occurring frequently across southern and eastern Afghanistan’s rural Pashtun belt and with ethnic Tajiks in the northern Afghan countryside, bacha bāzī has become a shockingly common practice. Afghanistan’s mujahideen warlords, who fought off the Soviet invasion and instigated a civil war in the 1980s, regularly engaged in acts of pedophilia. Keeping one or more “chai boys,” as these male conscripts are called, for personal servitude and sexual pleasure became a symbol of power and social status.

Since its post-2001 revival, bacha bāzī has evolved, and its practice varies across Afghanistan. According to military experts, the lawlessness that followed the deposing of the Taliban’s in rural Pashtunistan and northern Afghanistan gave rise to violent expressions of pedophilia. Boys were raped, kidnapped, and trafficked as sexual predators regained their positions of regional power. As rule of law mechanisms and general order returned to the Afghan countryside, bacha bāzī became a normalized, structured practice in many areas.

In brief, Afghanistan is not only posed to emerge at the hotbed of terrorism, it also is going to turn into a land of terror to girls, women and young boys, who may onwards force to silently endure the extreme cruelties of sexual perversions.

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