Crossing the Wire

by AnnaMaria Cardinalli

  Instead, findings here will be based upon field observations and interview responses by Pashtun men which were revealing regarding the topic, although discovered through the lines of questioning of other investigations. As sexuality is an essential building block of all human interaction and culture, these incidences of insight have been abundant, even couched in other research goals.

  Secondary interviewees who have had extensive relevant interaction have been debriefed regarding their experiences. These include public health officers and medics who have treated a number of Pashtun men for sexual conditions, and other service members involved, like HTT, in relationship-building and interpersonal interaction.

  Extensive open-source journalistic and academic writings on the subject have been additionally consulted, some involving directly quoted answers from Pashtun interviewees. References are included for further examination.[15]

  Key Observations

  A culturally-contrived homosexuality (significantly not termed as such by its practitioners) appears to affect a far greater population base then some researchers would argue is attributable to natural inclination.

  Some of its root causes lie in the severe segregation of women, the prohibitive cost of marriage within Pashtun tribal codes, and the depressed economic situation into which young Pashtun men are placed.

  Other root causes include a long-standing cultural tradition in which boys are appreciated for physical beauty and apprenticed to older men for their sexual initiation.[16] The fallout of this pattern of behavior over generations has a profound impact on Pashtun society and culture.

  Homosexuality is strictly prohibited in Islam, but cultural interpretations of Islamic teaching prevalent in Pashtun areas of southern Afghanistan tacitly condone it in comparison to heterosexual relationships in several contexts.

  Pashtun men are freer with companionship, affection, emotional and artistic expression, and the trust bred of familiarity with other men. They often lack the experience of these aspects of life with women.

  This usurping of the female role may contribute to the alienation of women over generations, and their eventual relegation to extreme segregation and abuse.

  Findings

  Military cultural awareness training for Afghanistan often emphasizes that the effeminate characteristics of male Pashtun interaction are to be considered “normal” and no indicator of a prevalence of homosexuality. This training is intended to prevent service members from reacting with typically western shock or aversion to such displays. However, slightly more in-depth research points to the presence of a culturally-dependent homosexuality appearing to affect a far greater population base then some researchers would argue is attributable to natural inclination. To dismiss the existence of this dynamic out of desire to avoid western discomfort is to risk failing to comprehend an essential social force underlying Pashtun culture—one with a variety of potential implications upon the efficacy and applicability of ISAF efforts and on the long-term future of Afghan society.

  HTT is often approached for advice by US and British service members who report encounters with men displaying apparently homosexual tendencies. These service members are frequently confused in the interpretation of this behavior. The British newspaper article below may be written with an attempt at humor, yet the Marines quoted typify the reaction often seen in service members upon their initial encounters with Pashtun males. As HTT has observed with frequency while on patrols in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, these men are outwardly affectionate toward both one another and male ISAF members, are extremely gentle in their demeanor and touch, and have often taken great care in embellishing their personal appearance with fingernails dyed red, hair and beards hennaed in careful patterns, and eyes very occasionally subtly outlined.

  The article titled “Startled Marines Find Afghan Men All Made Up to See Them,” by Chris Stephen ran in the national newspaper The Scotsman on May 24, 2002. Not even in reference to the more heavily Pashtun southern areas of Afghanistan, it read:

  In Baghram, British Marines returning from an operation deep in the Afghan mountains spoke last night of an alarming new threat—being propositioned by swarms of gay local farmers. An Arbroath Marine, James Fletcher, said: ‘They were more terrifying than the al-Qaeda. One bloke who had painted toenails was offering to paint ours. They go about hand in hand, mincing around the village.’ While the Marines failed to find any al-Qaeda during the seven-day Operation Condor, they were propositioned by dozens of men in villages the troops were ordered to search.

  Another interviewee in the article, a Marine in his 20’s, stated, “It was hell… Every village we went into we got a group of men wearing make-up coming up, stroking our hair and cheeks and making kissing noises.” Beyond reacting to the unusual sight of made-up men, which one can readily accept as a style unique to a different culture, these Marines appear to have no doubt that they were being sexually propositioned.

  One of the primary and obvious causes of this cultural tendency toward sexual expression between males is Pashtun society’s extremely limited access to women. Heterosexual relationships are only allowable within the bounds of marriage, and Pashtun honor demands that a man be able to demonstrate his ability to support a wife and family, as well as produce abundant wedding gifts for the bride and her parents, before he is allowed to marry. Therefore, given the economic situation of most young Pashtun men and the current state of employment and agriculture within the Pashtun regions of Afghanistan, marriage becomes a nearly unattainable possibility for many. A controversial Los Angeles Times article highlighted this issue and featured an interview with a young Afghan man whose situation was typical of this circumstance:

  In his 29 years, Mohammed Daud has seen the faces of perhaps 200 women. A few dozen were family members. The rest were glimpses stolen when he should not have been looking and the women were caught without their face-shrouding burkas. “How can you fall in love with a girl if you can’t see her face?” he asks.

  Daud is unmarried and has sex only with men and boys. But he does not consider himself homosexual, at least not in the Western sense. “I like boys, but I like girls better,” he says. “It’s just that we can’t see the women to see if they are beautiful. But we can see the boys, and so we can tell which of them is beautiful.”[17]

  Daud’s insistence that his behavior should not label him as homosexual is the next important point in understanding the nature of this dynamic, and opens the doors to a complex interrelationship between Islam and its cultural interpretations. Even men who practice homosexuality exclusively are not labeled by themselves or their counterparts as homosexual. To identify as such is to admit an enormous sin in Islam—one punishable by death under the Taliban and one that would result in severe tribal and familial ostracization today.[18] However, it appears to be the label, not the action or the preference, that poses the greatest problem.

  In the context of rural southern Afghanistan, the relationship between Islam (here defined as the teachings of Prophet Mohammed as expressed in the Koran) and what is believed about Islam by the local faithful can contain vast differences. This is in great part due to a barrier in language and education. Not generally able to understand Arabic, the language of the Koran which is not to be translated, the Muslim faithful of southern Afghanistan rely on the teaching and interpretation of local Mullahs to inform them of what the Koran says. The more rural the area, the far less likely it becomes that even the Mullah himself understands Arabic[19] and the more likely that what is taught is based upon local cultural tradition, independent of Islam itself. Homosexuality is strictly prohibited in Islam, but cultural interpretations of Islamic teaching prevalent in the area tacitly condone it in comparison to heterosexual relationships.

  A typical expression, echoed by a number of authors and interviewees, is that homosexuality is indeed prohibited within Islam, warranting great shame and condemnation. However, homosexuality is then narrowly and specifically defined as the love of anoth
er man. Loving a man would therefore be unacceptable and a major sin within this cultural interpretation of Islam, but using another man for sexual gratification would be regarded as a foible[20]—undesirable but far preferable to sex with a ineligible woman, which in the context of Pashtun codes, would likely result in issues of revenge and honor killings. These killings are a Pashtun, not Islamic requirement, although the two tend to become inexorably bound in the minds of rural villagers.[21] Similarly, the social circumstance that has made women foreign and unavailable (excessive veiling, segregation, and exclusion from public life) is generally also attributed to Islam in Pashtun communities, but is in itself a cultural construct, passed and exaggerated through local tradition.

  Another example of cultural misinterpretations of Islamic tenets, bent to support homosexuality over heterosexuality, comes from a U.S. Army medic completing a year-long tour in a rural area of Kandahar province.[22] She and her male colleagues were approached by a local gentleman seeking advice on how his wife could become pregnant. When it was explained to him what was necessary, he reacted with disgust and asked, “How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God has made unclean, when one could be with a man, who is clean? Surely this must be wrong.”

  Nowhere to hide—Afghan plain.

  The religious basis for his statement lies in the Islamic regulation that women are ritually unclean for participation in prayer while on their monthly cycle. In the Koran, this tenet does not extend to imply that women are unclean or unapproachable otherwise. However, local cultural interpretations have created the passionately if erroneously held belief that women are physically undesirable. Interestingly, the Koran specifies a number of physical circumstances under which a man can be rendered ritually unclean, but none of these are extended to the belief that he is unclean or undesirable in general. Therefore, it seems possible that such interpretations of Islam are at some point picked and chosen to support already-held beliefs or tendencies.

  Interestingly, the same medics treated an outbreak of gonorrhea among the local national interpreters on their camp. Approximately 12 of the nearly 20 young male interpreters present in the camp had contracted the disease, and most had done so anally. This is a merely anecdotal observation and far too small of a sample size to make any generalizations regarding the actual prevalence of homosexual activity region-wide.[23] However, given the difficulty in procuring such data, it may serve as some indicator.[24]

  Of greatest interest here, however, is the way the men reacted to the education offered them so as to avoid the disease in the future. They insisted that they could not have caught the disease sexually because they were not homosexuals—important evidence of the rejection of the label regardless of the actual activities in which a man engages. Instead, they concluded that it was the result of mixing green and black tea, which became a running joke throughout the camp. They also continued to return for treatment after re-contracting the condition, having not believed or heeded the instruction they received.

  However, beyond the issues of poverty, segregation, and tacit cultural approval which apparently contribute to the prevalence of consensual sex among adult men, there seem to be darker underlying dynamics additionally at play. To begin illustrating these, HTT turns to a field experience in which a principle interviewee was a boy in his very early teens. His circumstance, combined with the nonverbal reaction of his adult male companions to the women interviewers present, was revealing regarding the social and cultural factors underlying the exchange. The following is quoted directly from HTT field notes of the incident:

  Upon arrival at Camp Leatherneck in Helmand province, HTT was initially limited in its ability to conduct research with foot patrols and therefore sought to engage Afghan truck drivers who came on to the base for general atmospheric information. For the most part, such drivers are staunch allies who take enormous risks, as it is publicly evident that they assist American and Coalition Forces, and they frequently face reprisals from insurgent fighters. Also to be noted is the fact that truck drivers are highly cosmopolitan in comparison to most rural Afghan populations, as they have seen and traveled within many regions, to include western-influenced metropolitan areas. It should be anticipated that they would be therefore less likely to display local Pashtun resistance to the open and public presence of women.

  On day one, HTT met only a group of four or five truck drivers, all of whom were from Helmand, living approximately 50 miles away from the camp. The most striking interviewee was a boy, about 12–14 years old, traveling with a group of older men. He spoke English beautifully, Dari beautifully, Pashto with apparent fluency, and when asked about other languages he knew, said he also spoke Urdu.[25] This was an absolutely brilliant child.

  Asked why he was traveling with the other men, they identified him as their ‘little mechanic’ and said he could repair any problems they had on the road. This added greatly to the already very strong impression of the intelligence of this child.

  The boy told HTT that he was traveling with his brother, an older truck driver, and that their truck had been hit by an insurgent rocket on their way in. (He was proud to point out the location of impact.) The referenced brother was not present [and could not later be located]. The boy also explained that while their time on the road could be shortened, they take a circuitous route to the FOB, lasting about 10 days, in an attempt to throw off or avoid Taliban attacks.

  I was deeply impressed with the boy, yet experienced a sense of wariness from the men who combined looks of distaste among themselves with slightly-too-slow requisite politeness toward the two female HTT members present. They had no such apparent problem with the male Human Terrain Analyst or Team Leader. The latter of the two approached in a U.S. military uniform.[26] Therefore, the reaction of the interviewees appeared to be an issue regarding females, rather than an issue regarding Americans or the American Military. Nevertheless, I left the interview uplifted thinking that the future of Afghanistan was in the hands of brilliant, brave children like this.[27]

  This incident was later re-examined in conversation with a group of American interviewees who together and individually spoke with many, many years experience working directly with the culture in-country.[28] They reminded me that one of the country’s favorite sayings is “women are for children, boys are for pleasure.” One of the interviewees shared stories of how groups of men, ie. shepherding parties, would always travel with one boy “for fun.” Sadly, the talented young mechanic came immediately to mind. HTT produced a picture of him with the group of drivers, and the interviewees were quite confident that their worst suspicions were correct. One interviewee then told the story of a time he found a 14-year-old boy quite literally in the hands of a group of Afghan security guards under his command. He physically fought the guards to free the boy and drove him back to Kabul, hours away, returning him home to his family, from whom he had apparently been forcibly taken in order to travel with the guards.

  While in many areas of southern Afghanistan such treatment of boys appears to be shrouded in some sense of secrecy, in Kandahar it constitutes an openly celebrated cultural tradition. Kandahar’s long artistic and poetic tradition idolizes the pre-pubescent “beardless boy” as the icon of physical beauty. 19th-century British authors report their observations of Pashtun fighters singing poetic “odes of their longing for young boys.”[29] The Los Angeles Times author cited earlier notes this tradition as alive and well in very recent literature:

  A popular poem by Syed Abdul Khaliq Agha, who died last year, notes Kandahar’s special reputation. ‘Kandahar has beautiful halekon,’ the poem goes. They have black eyes and white cheeks.[30]

  Further, even the newly re-emerging musical nightlife of southern Afghan cities idolizes pre-pubescent boy performers, whose star status lasts only as long as their voices remain immature. While these performers themselves may be quite innocent, the reputation of their availability to patrons of the establishments at which they perform is difficult to disp
el.[31]

  Known frequently as halekon, ashna, or bacha bereesh,[32] “beautiful” beardless boys are coveted, almost as possessions, by men of status and position for sexual relationships. Further, the more attractive or talented the boy is deemed, the more his presence elevates the status of his patron. In the article “Afghan Boy Dancers Sexually Abused by Former Warlords,” various interviewees state the following:[33]

  ‘Everyone tries to have the best, most handsome and good-looking boy,’ said a former mujahideen commander, who declined to be named.

  ‘Sometimes we gather and make our boys dance and whoever wins, his boy will be the best boy.’ Former mujahideen commanders hold such parties in and around Pul-e Khumri about once a week.

  ‘Having a boy has become a custom for us. Whoever wants to show off, should have a boy,’ said Enayatullah, a 42-year-old landowner in Baghlan province.

  A key feature of this relationship, slightly different from the homosexuality practiced by men with other grown men who have limited access to women addressed earlier, is its more coercive nature rooted in an imbalance of power (economic, rank-associated, status/age-associated, etc.) between the parties involved. According to one observer:

  An apparent distinction seems evident in this particular Kandahar variation… The dating and courtship appears more coercive, more opportunistic and seems to take advantage of younger guys who almost have no other choice than to accept the money or gifts from bigger and more powerful ‘commanders’ whose bit of authority is bestowed by their gang-member status, their guns and the shattered legal/police system. [34]