“Bacha Bazi” refers to a pederastic practice traditional in Central Asian societies ranging from Kazakhstan to Pakistan, wherein an established adult male cultivates a romantic and/or sexual relationship with a pubescent or adolescent boy. Despite common misconceptions engendered by Western media, it is not necessarily a form of sexual slavery. Eradicating it is a common goal of both well-intentioned Western benefactors unaware of local cultures and anti-Western Islamic fundamentalists like the Taliban: Western opinion regards it as a particularly heinous form of child abuse, and Islamic fundamentalism regards it, like all other forms of homosexuality, as a sacrilege worthy of punishment by death. Amid the expressions of moral outrage from both sides, we seldom hear directly from those who themselves experienced such a relationship when they were boys.
As a result of teamwork between a Western director and a local activist fluent in the languages of Afghanistan and the border regions of Pakistan, accounts were recruited from 112 men and late-teenage boys who responded to invitations circulated via social media from 2023 to 2025. They were paid for their participation in the study. The director, Andrew Calimach, has assembled and edited their translated accounts into an archive of immense anthropological value, and has given the Percy Foundation permission to feature an excerpt of his archive (comprising ten accounts) on its website. We anticipate that we may eventually be able to feature more of it. Researchers interested in accessing the entire archive may reach out to Mr. Calimach through us.
Participants were asked to submit detailed narratives about their relationship, which were coded by the editor to facilitate later analysis. In addition, subjects provided answers to a structured questionnaire with over 40 items, asking about perceived harms and benefits of their relationship, the prevalence of same-sex relationships within their community and attitudes toward them, whether they would themselves like to have such a relationship with a boy, what they would think of their son having such a relationship, and other matters that might not have been covered in their narrative.
Responses varied between shame and pride in accordance with the character of each relationship, which ranged from violent rape to willing companionship, with some seeing it as exploitation and others viewing it as an important developmental experience. Most report mixed feelings, appreciating the attention they received, but fearing negative judgment from their family and social condemnation. Surprising is the ubiquity of same-sex relationships even within an outwardly homophobic culture. The picture that emerges is one of a complexity that resists one-dimensional value judgments.
For reasons of force majeure, this project must conclude with this twelfth and last volume, after having collected 117 case studies of boys in their relations with men. Considering that all the participants expressed gratitude at being offered the opportunity to reveal their joy or their grief to the world, and asserted that they benefited from the process, it is regrettable that the project can not continue. It has offered an extraordinary service to the participants, and it would have been well to continue to serve society in this fashion.
There is a reason why such a project has not been undertaken until now, on this scale, at any time in history. That reason has now gained the upper hand. The best reply to such suppression is to hope that the accounts preserved in this collection, having benefited the tellers of the stories, will now in turn benefit their readers.
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