Hanif Atmar, the Afghan interior minister, was beside himself. An American newspaper was about to publish a story that would defame his country. He rushed over to the United States embassy and demanded that diplomats there quash the article -- unaware, it seemed, of the concept of a free press.

No, the article was not about Afghanistan's endemic corruption, barbarous treatment of women or heedless neglect of its citizens who live under mediaeval conditions. All of those are old stories.

This time, DynCorp International, an American contractor, had asked Afghan police to "purchase a service from a child," as a State Department cable made public by WikiLeaks described it. The idea was to stage a "dancing boys" party for DynCorp workers.

Dancing boys, you may recall (I wrote about this in August) is a prettified moniker for a sordid, culturally sanctioned Afghan practice more accurately characterized as pedophilia.

For centuries, Afghan men have taken prepubescent boys as lovers. Every week in some communities, young boys dress up as girls, wearing makeup and bells on their feet, and dance for a dozen or more leering middle-aged men who throw money at them and then take them home. A State Department report calls this a "widespread, culturally sanctioned form of male rape." But Afghan men like to show off their young consorts with pride.

This Afghan "custom" is not so well known in the United States. Obviously, though, Americans working in Afghanistan are well aware of the practice, and DynCorp apparently thought it might be amusing to hire a dancing boy as entertainment for an employee going-away party. They even filmed it, the State Department cable said. This was in the spring of 2009.

Appalling as this is, it's also a strong indication of still another dark turn in the Afghan war. After almost 10 years there, Americans stationed in the country are beginning to mimic some of the aberrant practices of Afghan society.

Other WikiLeaks cables describe how corruption runs from the bottom of society to the very top and pervades every aspect of Afghan life. Well, the State Department inspector general and American law-enforcement agencies are fingering record numbers of soldiers and contractors for offering or receiving rich bribes.

Examples over the last few months include two military personnel and four contractors who were charged with bribery and conspiracy that netted them $100,000. A U.S. Army Corp of Engineers employee was arrested on charges of soliciting a $40,000 bribe. Two military officers pled guilty to accepting a $90,000 bribe. And two soldiers split a $50,000 bribe for steering a particular job to a defense contractor. This is a small sampling of numerous similar incidents. When everyone around you is stealing and bribing, it must be hard to resist.

President Obama should focus on all of this when he takes up the scheduled war review this month. Instead, I'll bet all we'll hear is: The military is making progress.

When Atmar, the interior minister, showed up at the embassy and described the DynCorp problem, American diplomats "were appalled," a senior American official told me, adding: "To be frank, these sorts of dances take place all the time, but when it is done for foreigners it becomes far more disturbing." My point, exactly.

The cable said Assistant Ambassador Joseph Mussomeli told Atmar that trying to talk the reporter out of running the story "would give her the sense that there is a more terrible story to report." Atmar told Mussomeli that his ministry had arrested two Afghan policeman and nine other Afghans and accused them of being "facilitators" for DynCorp. (Months later, Atmar lost his job for failing to prevent militants from opening fire on a meeting called to consider whether to begin peace discussions with the Taliban.)

DynCorp's spokesman told reporters that "the leadership of the team exhibited poor judgment and were subsequently terminated," adding that no "illegal behavior occurred." As far as anyone knows, the boy simply danced, probably in a suggestive way, but nothing aberrant actually happened.

The next month, the Washington Post did publish an anodyne story about the event. The reporter said the boy had been hired to perform a "tribal dance" for the party's honoree, dancing "around a DynCorp employee sitting in a single chair." The article showed no evidence that the reporter understood the dance's actual purpose.

But, as the senior American official said, "The notion of a dancing boy conjures up all sorts of frightful images and was not something that should have been condoned."

 

Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former foreign correspondent for the New York Times.

 

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(C) 2010 BY JOEL BRINKLEY; DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.