Will a Decolonized Occupational Therapy Embrace Bacha Bazi?

Occupational therapy for displaced persons is an emerging niche specialty in rehabilitation science. So let’s say that you’re a Filipino occupational therapist (OT) who gets hired to work with Afghan refugees who have disabilities. You want to deal with your patients in a culturally competent manner. You want them to engage in occupations that will improve their health and wellness without imposing your values on them.

But what they deem to be positive to their well-being will not always be the same as your ideas of what is healthy. And for some of these Afghans, Bacha Bazi is a crucial part of their social participation.

The Chai Boys

Bacha Bazi is an ancient tradition among certain sub-populations in Afghanistan. In this “Boy Play”, males below 18 years old dress up as girls, dance before male audiences, and have sexual intercourse with adult Afghan men. Many of these boys were deceived into accepting this arrangement, thinking that they were only supposed to dance for entertainment. But according to the documentaries They Don’t Just Dance and The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan, some Afghan boys sold themselves willingly. They saw it as the only way out of poverty. An Afghan soldier even noted that many of the boys that he encountered wanted to have sex with older men.

Adult Afghan men had sex with chai boys because women were inaccessible in certain Afghan sub-populations that strictly observed their interpretation of the Quran. Women had to wear burqas, stay at home, and go out only when male guardians accompanied them. Men and women in these subcultures were not allowed to date. They can’t entertain each other in non-sexual ways, such as through singing or dancing.

Many adult Afghan men coped with the sexual repression initially by getting boys to dance in female clothes. Eventually, the Afghan men developed feelings for these boys and had sex with them in exchange for money.

Several Afghan warlords practiced this form of sex slavery before the Taliban banned it and executed its perpetrators in the 1990s. Bacha Bazi became prevalent again during the US occupation in Afghanistan. Although the US-propped Afghan government had laws against pederasty, its constitution did not explicitly ban Bacha Bazi.

Moreover, state officials had chai boys themselves. Soldiers and police officers who fought for the Northern Alliance that defeated the Taliban revived the practice by enslaving young males when the Islamists were driven out. They even engaged in this form of pederasty inside US bases. American soldiers who spoke out against this practice were disciplined by their commanders. The US troops were told to tolerate Bacha Bazi as this was allegedly part of Afghan culture. Transnational institutions may have laws against it, but local officials didn’t implement them because many of them owned prepubescent male sex slaves. And isn’t forcing Judeo-Christian international laws upon Afghans a form of colonialism, at least according to leftist academicians?

With the fall of Afghanistan, the Taliban will most likely criminalize Bacha Bazi again. It should be noted though that although both groups are mostly Muslim, Afghans see Taliban fighters as terrorists from Pakistan who are imposing their barbaric brand of justice. In other words, Afghans see Taliban fighters as foreign invaders although the latter may be ethnically Afghans.

Which Cultural Practices Are Better?

Afghanistan had a diverse population. Most Afghans practiced Islam, and thus looked upon homosexuality as sin. In fact, one of the driving forces of the Taliban’s rise was the outcry against Bacha Bazi among Muslims. But some lived like liberal Westerners who looked upon sex slavery as a crime because of the Judeo-Christian presuppositions that they smuggled into their worldviews. And there were those who made it a tradition to fornicate with boys because of the inaccessibility of women in fundamentalist Muslim groups.

So let’s say that you’re an OT who’s working with Afghan refugees. How will you deal with an adult Afghan patient whose goal is to have sex with his chai boy, who he claims to love? He says that the boy loves him too. He also tells you that Bacha Bazi was an accepted practice in the region of Afghanistan where he came from. Are you going to impose your Judeo-Christian worldview and notion of individual rights on this man by putting him in jail? Are you going to look the other way because it’s “their culture”? Will you enable him to engage in Bacha Bazi? The Central Intelligence Agency officers did, albeit indirectly.

My course of action will be to report him to the authorities. When he gets thrown in jail, I will refer him to an OT who works in a correctional setting. I will recommend that the OT train his social skills and help him engage in non-sexual leisure activities. Like basket-weaving! That’s because I adhere to George Barton’s idea of how occupational therapy should be.

(Photo from Canva)