Ickbar and the Bacha BaziChapter 87 of Balloon Wars: An ISR Operator's Account Of The Wars In Iraq & Afghanistan
Chapter 91 – Ickbar
Teaching Afghan boys to drive. Bacha Bazi – sexual slavery on American installations. Objectifying the Afghans.
Ickbar was twelve years old. He and an older boy, whose name I didn’t learn, and two old men gathered the trash every day and disposed of it in the dumpster near the DFAC or in the burn pit. Ickbar was taught a little English at the local school which the Taliban destroyed.
Before living there in Waza Khwa news of a school being destroyed in a war went in one ear and out the other. But the school that was lost way out on that high plateau hadn’t been there for more than a few years in village that was hundreds if not thousands of years old. The people who built it and whose children attended it lost something much more precious than a building.
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Chapters 1 & 2 – PTDS & the ISR Network
Chapter 12 – Battle in Al Atiba’a
Chapter 17 – Muqtada al-Sadr
Chapter 33 – Urged to Jump
Chapter 40 – Mortar Attack
Chapter 78 – UTAMS Repair
Chapter 79 – IRAM – A Deadly New Weapon
Chapter 82 – Bagram and Waza Khwa
Chapter 86 – Captain Ellis
Chapter 87 – 9th Inflation and The Karez
Chapter 116 – Just Living
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Ickbar was a nice kid although not very friendly. I didn’t know if he was afraid of me, or Americans in general or just shy. I asked Judi to send a soccer ball and a kite for him and when I gave them to him he was grateful and a bit confused. He finally brightened and seemed to appreciate my attention when I taught him and his friend to drive the Gator®.
The lesson came after a shipment of equipment and personal mail. A lot of boxes and packing material was left so I told them they could use the Gator® to haul it to the dumpster by the DFAC. He said they didn’t know how to drive it so I backed it to the boxes as if I was going to drive it for them but then told his friend to get in the driver’s seat.
James had said Ickbar’s friend was retarded but I didn’t think so. He didn’t speak any English and he was a little childish and slow but I didn’t think he was mentally handicapped. Sitting in the driver seat he beamed. I had Ickbar sit on the trash behind us to interpret my instructions and he too wore a broad smile.
With gestures and Ickbar’s help I indicated what to do with his feet and how to put it in gear. The Gators® are little, four wheel John Deere® utility ATV’s that are very easy to handle but as we started forward it became clear that he’d never driven anything. He had a heavy foot and made it lurch and he couldn’t drive in a straight line, at first over-steering so badly that I had to grab the wheel and take it out of gear. When we started again I kept the wheel let it go to show him that he didn’t have to continuously turn it to keep us on a line. The balloon site was open ground and from there we drove over the helicopter landing zone so it was OK that we were swerving but when we entered the main street through the “B” huts he was still driving in a serpentine fashion and at times too fast. I kept my hand on the gear shift and had to put it in neutral more than once as he sped toward a pedestrian or another vehicle. Some the soldiers laughed and others, those of higher ranks, wondered why an Afghan child was behind the wheel and driving near them.
He was having fun and so was I and Ickbar was very excited. When we got to the dumpster their mood changed dramatically. There, two sullen and even angry looking Afghan men watched us approach. I greeted them and they said something to my driver. He quickly unloaded the trash and didn’t respond to either of the two men. I didn’t either except to look them in the eye.
Ickbar’s friend drove us back and on the way we saw one of the old men who worked with Ickbar. To be polite we stopped. The old man pointed to the driver and then to his own head indicating he’s “touched”. It didn’t matter.
When we got back to the site we switched seats and I demonstrated how to steer, letting go of the wheel to show him again that he didn’t have to turn it so much. Then we switched again and he did much better. Ickbar’s took his turn and he had no trouble with steering but he wasn’t good with the accelerator or the brake at first. He had obviously paid close attention to what his friend had done and what I did and said. As he drove it around the site several times he laughed and waved at the others providing the only display of joy I’d seen from any Afghan other than a young child.
When Ickbar and the other boy left they were both happy and satisfied with themselves. They became a nuisance though, coming back everyday thereafter for a week wanting to drive and even took it once without permission. I had to be stern with them about it but it wasn’t a big deal. It felt like it did with my own kids.
Afghans did other work on the FOB. Some worked in the DFAC and one took care of the gym and did the laundry and we had a crew crushing stone and spreading it on the balloon site. There were about ten men on that crew each being paid $2.50 per day. One of them operated the grader and he always had a boy with him who was about the same age as Ickbar. The Entry Check Point for the FOB was adjacent to the site so I saw the locals come and go. Several were accompanied by boys who stayed by their sides while they were on the FOB. I thought they were their sons or grandsons but James, who was pretty mean to the Afghans, told me they were couples. According to him the boys were sold by their parents or brokers to the men for sex. I thought it was an accusation born of his prejudice but I found out later that it was true.
It’s a practice the Pashtuns have engaged in for a long time called Bacha Bazi or ‘Boy Play’. A significant percentage of Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern provinces are bacha baz, the term for an older man with a boy lover. Literally it means “boy player.” It’s a practice that speaks to how different Pashtun culture is from American as much as the Karez. In Delaware, where I’m from, merely possessing a picture of a minor in a sexual situation can put you in prison. In many Afghan provinces Bacha Bazi isn’t merely tolerated, being a bacha baz actually elevates one’s status.
Camel herd passing through Waza KHwa
“Frontline” on PBS® aired a program on Bacha Bazi called “The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan”. The practice isn’t limited to the south and not entirely to Pashtuns. The producers followed a former mujahideen commander and businessman in the northern province of Takhar as he recruited and trained boys for the trade. Police and military commanders were among those implicated in the PBS program.
The title was drawn from the scenes of a popular pastime, dance parties, at which boys, generally between the ages of nine and fifteen wear women’s clothes, makeup and bells and dance for dozens of lusting, middle-aged men who sometimes bid for the boys then take them home and, according to the norms of my culture and laws of my society, rape them.
The Taliban banned Bacha Bazi. The prohibition and the punishment for violating the ban helped popularize Taliban rule in many areas. The sentence was death by being buried under a wall. There are plenty of abandoned mud walls in Afghanistan. Pushing one on a man with a tank is a cheap and cruel form of execution. It’s not always effective though and if the buried offender survives, Shari’a Law says he may go free. Sometimes, despite Shari’a Law, they push another wall on him and in some cases that’s done repeatedly until the man is finally killed.
Selling children and having sex with them is a crime under the current Afghan government but enforcement and punishment is not as rigorous as it was under the Taliban.
The men who I saw with Ickbar didn’t treat him as if he was special to them and he wasn’t a good looking kid so maybe he wasn’t subjected to that kind of abuse. For my own sake, I’m glad that at the time I was only aware of the practice as rumor. Now that I know the facts I am more confused by the culture. Worse than that, if I had known of Bacha Bazi then, I would have been compelled to intervene. Or maybe I wouldn’t have, just like the others. What would it have meant about me if I hadn’t?
Considering what I could or should have done if I had known at the time raises important questions and crucial points on fundamental matters. What was going on that allowed those men to walk onto the FOB with those boys? Every day they came to work they were stopped at the Entry Check Point and were searched and they had to show identification to an American or Polish soldier. No one enters the FOB without identification and no one is given the required form of identification, which he wears around his neck at all times, unless he is entitled to it. Ickbar had one.
James knew and I’d heard the “rumor” from others so it was common knowledge that the young boys who were always in the company of some of the older men were victims of Bacha Bazi, a crime, and one I find abhorrent. What should a moral person do then, how about a principled, moral person who writes letters to Colonels and suffers slings and arrows to deal with injustice. What should the FOB commanders who issue the IDs do?
The boys were not hired to do whatever it was they did at the FOB. Their IDs were only issued because they were with the men who were hired. To issue IDs to those boys, at some point along the way someone in authority became aware that the boys were the property of the men they were with. As they came on the FOB and were seen there, guards and others became aware of the same fact. They came to know that sexual slavery was being practiced on United States military installations and they let it happen. I had let it happen.
If I ignored the same crimes in Delaware my community would hate me and my life could be ruined. Allowing them on property we control in countries we occupy doesn’t have that result because the people in Delaware don’t know I looked away. To rationalize setting aside our values we objectify the Afghans and Iraqis that we are not fighting, the ones we are there to help; the honorable men, nearly all the women and every child.
It should be easy and required that we not treat children like the enemy and we don’t allow them to be chattel.
Thoreau wrote, “We build on piles of our own driving”. Not acting according to our values is the root of our regrets and the opposite of Thoreau’s piles.
This program is about my job in the war zones and how the events of September 11, 2001 affected my family. It isn’t the television version of the memoir. The resources to produce that are beyond me, but the video and stills in this more modest production compliment the book.
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