Afghanistan's 'dancing boys' are made to dress like girls and abused bypedophiles

Bacha bazi, an ancient tradition which literally means "playing with boys" involves a wide variety of activities that involves homosexual child sexual abuse and pederasty. 

It may include to some extent child pornography, sexual slavery and child prostitution in which prepubescent and adolescent boys who can be as young as 12 ( usually orphans or from very poor families) are sold to wealthy or powerful men for entertainment and sexual activities.

Afghanistan's poverty has been a driving force in the rise of bacha bazi in the last 15 years. It makes it easy for predators to prowl the streets targeting 'pretty' young boys, enticing them from their families with fake promises of work or education. Instead, the boys are trained as dancers, made to perform to groups of men dressed as girls, bells on their flowing skirts and make up on their faces. Once the party is over, and the dancing has finished, the true horror of their role is revealed. 

Then the boys are passed between the men, taken to hotel rooms where they are sexually abused. 'The boys don’t earn anything from the parties,' explained photographer Barat Ali Batoor, who spent months winning the boys' trust and documenting their lives.
'But they live as though they are in a relationship with their masters, so their masters keep them, house them and buy them food and things. 'They have sex with their masters and then at the parties they are abused by different people.' 

The perpetrators are protected by the police, scared to upset the powerful warlords and businessmen. 

'A war lord has many - they keep maybe 10 boys, all together,' Dr Sobhrang told MailOnline. 'When the boys are beautiful it shows they are powerful, but also the number. You have to spend a lot of money on the boys, feed and keep them clothed. 'It shows your wealth.' 

Yet for the boys, more than two fifths of whom are between the age of 13 and 15, being chosen as a bacha bareesh - man without a beard - it is a life sentence, one which will see them cast out of their families and shunned by society, many turn to drugs. The fact homosexuality is forbidden in Islam is swept under the carpet by those who participate this horrible act, who claim there is a loophole. They are not in love with the boys, and therefore not gay.