February 24, 2010: Western media are having a hard time getting headline grabbing stories out of Afghanistan. The fighting doesn't do it, as the Taliban always lose when there is a battle. The roadside bombs and mines have gotten old, especially after years of bombing videos coming out of Iraq. The really important stuff, like the intel work and Special Forces scouting out in the mountains, is all classified, and kind of boring for a TV audience.

But there's always sex. But in the Islamic world, sex is, well classified. Especially illicit sex. Thus some enterprising reporters have latched onto the ancient practice (in the entire region, from North Africa to India) of using young (well, teenage down to about ten) boys for sex and other entertainments (dancing, cross dressing, camel jockeys). This has been a thing with the rich and powerful in the area, for thousands of years. In some places it is sort of legal, but generally it is tolerated, even if officially forbidden. That's because this sort of thing is most popular among the wealthy and powerful. Getting this story for Western audiences is dangerous, as those who indulge would rather make Western reporters disappear, than stop. These guys don't consider themselves pederasts, just the custodians of ancient cultural traditions. Or something like that.

When the Taliban came to power in the mid 1990s, they outlawed the practice, but it continued anyway, just more discreetly. The Taliban tried to crack down on homosexuality in general, especially in the south, around Kandahar (the "capital" of the pro-Taliban Pushtun tribes.) Didn't work. Casual homosexuality has long been the custom down there, and Afghans from other parts of the country (especially non-Pushtuns) have a large repertoire of humor and insults about the proclivities of those Kandaharis (one of the more printable ones is about how birds flying over Kandahar have to do so with one wing, as the other one must be used to cover the avian backside.)

One of the reasons the Taliban are widely hated is because, while they officially (and loudly) condemn   using boys for sex, some Taliban leaders do it anyway, as do a larger proportion of the drug lords the Taliban are allied with.