Occurring frequently across southern and eastern Afghanistan's rural Pashtun belt and with ethnic Tajiks in the northern Afghan countryside, bacha bazi has become a shockingly common practice ...

In December 2012, Maj. Bill Steuber heard that three boys had been shot dead while fleeing the Afghan police headquarters. A fourth was shot point blank in the knee as punishment for trying to ...

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.

Afghan forces are seen under the influence of drugs, indiscriminately firing into the air without regard for civilians, and US soldiers discover four men kidnapped by police and used to barter ...

Dan, the Canadian head of the local security force, shook his head and held up his hand, “He’ll become a chai-boy. They’ll rape him. ” ...

Afghan tradition allows girls to access the freedom of boys Sanam, a bacha posh, a girl living as a boy, sits next to her mother and father during an interview in their house, in Kabul ...

The Afghan people have suffered for far too long. The abuse of boys has been a disgusting part of this legacy. Pedophilia is not part of Afghan culture, and not accepted by the Afghan people.

In 2010, veteran Afghan reporter Najibullah Quraishi went undercover to investigate this illicit sex trade for the FRONTLINE film The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan, which is embedded above.

While the Afghan government has been able to address some of these issues since the Taliban's ouster in 2001, archaic social traditions and deep-seated gender norms have kept much of rural ...

One tradition in Afghanistan allows girls access to the male world: bacha posh, in which a girl can dress and act as a boy. But it ends at puberty.

Sanam, a bacha posh, a girl living as a boy, sits next to her mother and father during an interview in their house, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Dec. 7, 2021.

In Afghanistan, the bacha posh tradition is “one of the most under-investigated” topics in terms of gender issues, said Barfield, who spent about two years in the 1970s living with an Afghan ...