The children forced into 'Bacha Bazi' sexual servitude by the Taliban: The group has decriminalized marrying girls... but their commanders are guilty of equally depraved abuse towards boys

By ELIANA SILVER, SENIOR FOREIGN NEWS REPORTER Published: 09:40, 30 May 2026 | Updated: 09:40, 30 May 2026 Adorned in makeup and dressed in brightly coloured women's clothing, young boys are paraded before groups of powerful men to dance, before being subjected to rape. For thousands of impoverished children in Afghanistan, this systemic sexual exploitation is the harrowing reality of Bacha Bazi.  The barbaric tradition, whose name translates to 'boy play', has persisted for centuries, turning boys into sex slaves for the country's elite. While Afghanistan's Taliban rulers publicly claim to oppose the practice, Bacha Bazi continues as an open secret. Survivors who have escaped speak of beatings, rape and psychological torment, only to be cast aside once they grow facial hair and are no longer considered desirable. Many turn to prostitution, drug addiction or suicide, unable to escape the trauma they have endured.  Others face further violence upon returning home, while the suspension of much international aid following the Taliban's return to power in 2021 has left victims with limited access to support and rehabilitation. All this takes place in a country where homosexuality can carry the death penalty and pederasty is supposedly punishable by lengthy prison sentences. Photographer Barat Ali Batoor documented Bacha Bazi boys' lives for months in a 2010 Frontline documentary A young Afghan boy is dressed by his 'owner' for a private party in 2008 Despite the Taliban's legal ban on the practice, a recent report suggests it remains widespread.  The US State Department in its latest Trafficking in Persons report, found that child soldier recruitment, human trafficking and Bacha Bazi continue in Afghanistan.  The report said the Taliban recruit children through coercion and deception, including false promises, and documented cases of Bacha Bazi involving Taliban officials as well as other armed groups.  Survivors told investigators that local commanders and influential figures are now among the main perpetrators but that before the Taliban's 2021 takeover, military commanders, police officers and government officials were also involved.  The roots of Bacha Bazi stretch back to at least the 13th century and the practice has been widely documented by domestic and foreign intellectuals, historians and politicians visiting the region. But its most infamous resurgence came during the Mujahideen's war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Afghan commanders who fought in the resistance were notorious for keeping young boys as their personal possessions, treating them as status symbols as well as objects of abuse. When the Taliban first rose to power in the 1990s, they claimed one of their chief grievances was this 'perversion' among the warlords, and they outlawed the practice. But after the Taliban was ousted in 2001 amid the US invasion of Afghanistan, the old power structures returned, and so did Bacha Bazi. Though some boys reportedly volunteer, many are sold into this life by their own impoverished families desperate to get by. Others are quite simply abducted, including by police officers – the very people supposed to prevent Bacha Bazi from resurging. Once in their captors' hands, the children are forced to wear women's clothing and subjected to systematic sexual abuse. Photographs and videos that have surfaced online show boys at these gatherings, forced to perform in front of groups of men who later pass them around as objects of pleasure. Some show teenagers dressed in pink and red skirts or skin-tight tops, gyrating to music. Others show what appear to be prepubescent boys sent out to perform before bearded onlookers, many of whom filmed the content for their own satisfaction. A report by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) said: 'The victims of bacha bazi suffer from serious psychological trauma as they often get raped. 'Such victims suffer from stress and a sort of distrust, hopelessness and pessimistic feeling. Bacha bazi results in fear among the children and feelings of revenge and hostility develop in their mind.' In turn, many adolescent victims are said to grow up to have boy lovers of their own, repeating the cycle. 'In the absence of any services to recover or rehabilitate boys who are caught in this horrendous abuse, it's hard to know what happens to these children,' Charu Lata Hogg, a London-based fellow at Chatham House, told the Daily Mail. 'We have heard anecdotal reports that many grow up to keep their own bachas, perpetuating the revolving door of abuse.' A young boy dances for older men as they film in the barbaric practice of Bacha Bazi The foreign forces operating in Afghanistan through the 2000s and 2010s were well aware of Bacha Bazi but were often powerless to intervene because many of the Afghan commanders they allied with engaged in the practice. And in some conservative religious groups, Bacha Bazi is considered acceptable. According to a 2009 study by the Human Terrain Team, a support group for the US army, Pashtun social norms dictate that Bacha Bazi is not un-Islamic or homosexual at all. If the man does not love the boy, the sexual act is not reprehensible, and is far more ethical than raping a woman. Also, since the men penetrate the boys, it is seen as more ‘masculine’, and not a homosexual act. The horror of the situation was laid bare when Dan Quinn, a former US Special Forces captain, was relieved of his command and pulled from Afghanistan for attacking an American-backed Afghan militia commander who had kept a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave. 'The reason we were here is because we heard the terrible things the Taliban were doing to people, how they were taking away human rights,' Quinn later said. 'But we were putting people into power who would do things that were worse than the Taliban.' Following the death of American marine Lance Corporal Gregory Buckley Jr in 2012, his father, Gregory Sr revealed that his son told him that from his bunk in southern Afghanistan he could hear Afghan police officers sexually abusing boys they had brought to the military base. ‘At night we can hear them screaming, but we’re not allowed to do anything about it,’ the marine’s father recalled his son telling him.  ‘My son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it’s their “culture”,’ he told the New York Times. At the same time, the Taliban was recruiting hundreds of child prostitutes to work on military bases where Afghans were working for the Americans – then murdering the soldiers who abused them. Pimped to the Taliban by local tribes, the young boys infiltrated bases to work as dancers and prostitutes.  Once inside they poisoned or shot their abusers, or drugged the guards and opened the gates to Taliban fighters lying in wait.  Dozens of soldiers and policemen were killed this way over a period of several months in 2016: in the southern province of Urozgan, these honeytrap attacks were so effective that hundreds of policemen and officers were sacked. ‘The Taliban have figured out the biggest weakness of the police and sent about 100 beardless boys to penetrate checkpoints and poison and kill policemen,’ Ghulam Sakhi Rogh Lewani, Urozgan’s former police chief, said at the time. In the harrowing documentary The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan, Afghan journalist Najibullah Quraishi exposed the ease with which men acquire these children. Once young boys are sold by their families or abducted, many are harangued into harems and flogged by pimps and traffickers. Some boys are kept effectively as personal property, with their owners wary of allowing other men to see the children for fear they would try to steal them away. Others, however, are traded willingly as a commodity. Quraishi followed a man named Dastager, a former member of the Northern Alliance resistance forces that fought against the Soviets – and one of the most powerful men in Afghanistan’s Takhar province. Asked what he looked for when selecting a boy, Dastager was confident in his tastes. ‘[He] should be attractive, good for dancing,’ he said. ‘Around 12 or 13, and good-looking. I tell their parents that I will train them. ‘I’ll get a dancer to teach him dancing... We give the family money, and tell them that I’ll look after him. I’ll get him clothes and give him money. I pay for all his expenses. He doesn’t need to worry about anything.’ Dastager told the documentary that he had ‘taken in’ – that is, raped – more than 2,000 boys. The barbaric tradition, whose name translates directly to 'boy play', has persisted for centuries and is deeply entrenched in the country's power structures Dancing bacha (child) and the men admiring him, drawing by Sedoff from a painting by Vereshchagin from Journey through Central Asia, 1867-1868  Another powerful figure in the north of Afghanistan whose name was given as Mestary said that every military commander had a young companion as part of a sick game. 'I had a boy because every commander had one. There's competition amongst the commanders. Without one, I couldn't compete with the others.' Quraishi was able to talk to a handful of boys, some of whom had been groomed into thinking they were satisfied with their situation.  One boy – Ahmad – then 17, revealed to Reuters in 2007: ‘I love my lord. I love to dance and act like a woman and play with my owner. Once I grow up, I will be an owner and I will have my own boys.’ The tragedy continues even after the abuse finally stops. When these boys grow facial hair, they are marked as pariahs, and their options limited to becoming prostitutes or pimps. Many, as a result, turn to drugs. Photographer Barat Ali Batoor documented their lives for months for the Frontline documentary. According to Batoor: ‘There was one particular boy I remember who was about 13 when I first met him, who was taken and used in the parties.  'He started taking heroin to help him cope, but he was still being taken to the parties.  'In the end he ran away, and he moved around a lot so they wouldn’t find him. He was begging on the streets of Kabul.’ According to journalist Christian Stephen, the victims of Bacha Bazi not only face psychological trauma, but serious physical injuries including heavy internal bleeding, broken limbs, fractures, broken teeth, strangulation and, in some cases, death. Now, while many boys fall victim to this sexual exploitation, Afghan girls are equally vulnerable, with millions sold into forced marriages by families in desperate circumstances. The practice of selling daughters to older men for financial gain has become an unfortunately normalised response to deepening poverty in Afghanistan, a trend expected to rise as the economic crisis worsens.  And the Taliban has only intensified its war on women and girls, earlier this month formally recognising these child marriages under a new law. The law states that a marriage arranged with a child is legally valid provided the spouse is socially compatible and the dowry is appropriate, and that the child may later seek annulment after reaching puberty, but only through a court order. The document also adds that the silence of a 'virgin girl' is interpreted as consent to marriage, whereas the same silence from a male or previously married woman is not. And earlier this year, the Taliban introduced a new penal code creating a caste system which puts women on the same level as 'slaves'. As part of the new law, husbands are permitted to beat their wives as long as there is no serious bodily harm. Article 32 states that only if the husband beats the woman with a stick and this act results in severe injury such as 'a wound or bodily bruising', and the woman can prove it before a judge, will the husband be sentenced to 15 days' imprisonment. No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? 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