It is beginning to become public knowledge that the Afghan Police routinely sodomize young males every Thursday night…A Canadian military chaplain named Jean Johns reported that Canadian soldiers under treatment for posttraumatic stress syndrome had been told by their commanding officers to “ignore” any assaults or rapes on Afghan civilians they had seen…
Canadian soldiers come home confiding that killing Taliban insurgents isn’t as stressful as knowing an innocent kid might be regularly raped by an Afghan cop inside a Canadian military base.
Cpl. Travis Schouten spent six months in late 2006 and early 2007 in Kandahar with the Royal Canadian Regiment’s Seven Platoon, Charles Company, a 38-soldier unit that took part in foot patrols in the grape groves and poppy fields west of Kandahar airfield.”
The Toronto Star recently reported Cpl. Travis Schouten’s experiences in Kandahar…
“It’s a dusty shantytown,” he says. “The streets are full of people and wrecked vehicles and you get a lot of dead-eyed stares. There was no soccer with kids or anything. Our job was to kill the Taliban. We were there to fight. It was other guys who came in behind us who sat down for tea with village elders.”
What he saw would haunt him. He says he was told by an Afghan translator about “Man Sex Thursday,” a weekly routine in which Afghan soldiers, police and translators sexually abused young boys. Schouten is overwhelmed by guilt for not having intervened when he heard what he believes were the cries of boys being sexually assaulted, sounds he says were corroborated when he later saw a young boy, barely alive, with signs of rape trauma. His bowels and lower intestines had fallen out of his body.
The observations of a journalist visiting Canadian bases in Afghanistan (CIA link)was recently reported in the National Post…
Canadian soldiers in the main guard tower at forward operating base Wilson last summer winced when I asked about the sudden lineup of teenage boys along the mud walls of the neighbouring Afghan market.
“Wait a few minutes. You’ll see,” said one, his lip curling. “It’s disgusting.”
Sure enough, a handful of uniformed Afghan police officers emerged from their rundown detachment, walked through the barricades and started chatting up the dozen or so teens, some looking decidedly pre-teen.
A few minutes after they returned, the selected kids were waved through the main gates and went straight inside the police station. An hour later, when I left the observation post, the boys were still inside.
This evening ritual is often derided by soldiers as man-love Thursdays.
Afghan officials insist the notion of men and boys getting together the night before the Muslim holy day for sex is a myth. And, sure, it’s theoretically possible the cops were merely good-deed-doers giving these teens reading lessons.
But Canadian soldiers insisted we had just witnessed the regular Thursday evening negotiation for sex between Afghan men and boys, apparently for gifts or money.
Canadian soldiers serving in Afghanistan have been ordered by commanding officers “to ignore” incidents of sexual assault among the civilian population, says Jean Johns a military chaplain who counsels troops returning home with post-traumatic stress disorder.(source)
Man-boy homosexuality has flourished anew in the aftermath of Taliban zero-tolerance laws, albeit a selectively punished offence in that era. Warlords again parade cities with teenage boys known as an “ashna” by their side.
The strict social separation and severe consequences for premarital sex with women have given rise to the cultural wrinkle of men used for sexual recreation and women reserved for reproduction.
But that hardly makes it right when Afghan boys are police rape victims.(source)
What Do you Think ?
Is the sodomizing of young boys a legitimate cultural difference or are the Afghan allies in the fight against the Taliban cut from the same cloth as the brutal Taliban…