In Afghanistan, young boys and adolescents are adorned in makeup, dressed in brightly coloured women’s clothing and sent before groups of powerful men to dance and entertain.

They are victims of Bacha Bazi, an ancient practice that often turns them into slaves for the elite.

The barbaric tradition, whose name translates to ‘boy play’, has persisted for centuries and, while Afghanistan’s current Taliban

A UK government report published in November found that boys remain at high risk of commercial exploitation through Bacha Bazi, with the practice thriving under the same warlords and power brokers who have ruled Afghan society for generations.

‘Bacha Bazi cases are frequently underreported due to stigma and fear, particularly when perpetrators are police,’ the report read.

‘Despite the Taliban’s public stance against the practice, reports suggest it remains prevalent and largely unaddressed.’

Survivors who have escaped speak of beatings, rape, and psychological torment, only to be cast out 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.

Victims often face further violence upon returning home, and the suspension of international aid to Afghanistan since the Taliban returned in 2021 has left them with little access to support or rehabilitation.

All this in a country where homoity attracts the death penalty and pederasty is supposedly punishable by long prison sentences.

A young Afghan Bacha Bazi is dressed by his ‘owner’ in a private party on November 22, 2008 in a small city in the north of Afghanistan

Dancing bacha (child) and the men admiring him, drawing by Sedoff from a painting by Vereshchagin from Journey through Central Asia, 1867-1868

A boy dances at an event in Afghanistan

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 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 showed teenagers dressed in pink and red skirts or skin-tight tops, gyrating to music.

Others showed what appeared to be pre-pubescent 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 MailOnline.

‘We have heard anecdotal reports that many grow up to keep their own bachas, perpetuating the revolving door of abuse.’

A boy is seen dancing in the mountains of Afghanistan

The barbaric tradition, whose name translates directly to ‘boy play’, has persisted for centuries and is deeply entrenched in the country’s power structures

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.

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.’

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.

One 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.’

In 2015, a New York Times investigation revealed that child rape by government-affiliated Afghan commanders was so common that it became an open secret among US troops.

The Taliban, meanwhile, exploited Bacha Bazi to their own advantage, infiltrating US-backed Afghan police and military headquarters by sending in boys to entertain their enemies in Trojan Horse-style operations.

These boys, once inside the American-allied Afghan law enforcement compounds, would either poison their abusers, shoot them, carry out suicide bombings – or simply open the gates for Taliban fighters to carry out deadly attacks of their own.

In one 2016 operation in Afghanistan’s southern Uruzgan province, this method led to the deaths of dozens of Afghan soldiers and police officers.

Once young boys are sold by their families or abducted, many are harangued into harems and flogged by pimps and traffickers

A young Afghan Batcha Bazi (Dancing Boy) performs a dance in a private party on November 22, 2008 in a small city in the north of Afghanistan

Survivors who have escaped speak of beatings, rape, and psychological torment, only to be cast out once they grow facial hair and are no longer considered desirable

With the US departure in 2021 and the Taliban’s return to power, one might assume the practice has been stamped out once more.

Officially, it is illegal. In reality, it remains rampant.

Despite the Taliban’s public stance against Bacha Bazi, reports indicate that many of its own members continue the practice.

A 2024 US State Department report revealed that Taliban officials had engaged in slavery, including employing child soldiers who were also victims of abuse.

The Taliban’s own morality police – the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice – focus almost exclusively on policing women’s behaviour, while crimes like Bacha Bazi continue in the shadows.

Many of the same men who were warlords before 2001 – former Mujahideen fighters, tribal leaders, and wealthy elites – still wield influence, even under Taliban rule.

And with Afghanistan now more isolated than ever, there is little external pressure to stop them.

Reports from human rights organisations indicate that boys are still being bought, sold, and raped – sometimes by the very figures who claim to uphold the Taliban’s strict moral code.