Why Afghanistan Tried To Get The U.S. To Cover Up An American Contractor Renting Little Boys For Sex

So furious was the Afghanistan Interior Ministry with a brewing U.S. media story about an American contractor hiring "dancing boys, its chief tried getting the American embassy (and thus the State Department) to crush the story. As if the U.S. government has the power to silence the media. Oh dear!

One of the leaked State Department cables shows then-Ministor of Interior Hanif Atmar (pictured, top) requested the help of the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan to quash a story about DynCorp, which was under a U.S. government contract to train Afghan police. Certainly a story that claimed DynCorp employeers were buying drugs and little boys wouldn't be good for international relations. And, according to the June 2009 cable quoting Atmar's conversation with American Ambassador Joseph Adamo Mussomeli, such a report would "endanger lives."

Those "dancing boys," of course, are the bacha bazi, which we told you about in April. Boys ages 8-16 (and younger; disgusting old men like 'em wee) are hired away from their poor families for the entertainment of wealthier men. Officially they simply dress in up girls' clothing and dance; unofficially they are bought and sold to be raped. (Video of the "official," albeit still illegal version is below.) That an American contractor would be engaging in such activity is horrific.

Raw Story points us to a Washington Post July 2009 article that very briefly mentioned the scandal: "One effort to train Afghan civilian police has drawn attention from the State Department's inspector general following incidents of questionable management oversight, including one instance in which expatriate DynCorp employees in Afghanistan hired a teenage boy to perform a tribal dance at a company farewell party and videotaped the event."

Who needs Wikileaks when you've got State Department sources leaking info directly to reporters?

Missing from the story is whether the State Department did intervene — and speak to the WaPo reporter, which turned what could (and should) have been a much bigger story into a brief aside. No matter what you think about the Wikileaks scandal, and whether it's good or bad for democracy and/or national security, stories like these should be made public. Our money should not be going to U.S. corporations that use tax dollars to rape children. I don't think it gets simpler than that. Watch Vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpqqaNvR_iQ

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