Afghans' Growing Appetite For Porn

Taken from The Scottsman, UK, 14.11.06
By TERRY FRIEL

ON THE TV screen, the two naked young women writhe together to the sounds of Hotel California as the occasional crackle of gunfire punctuates the Afghan night.

Several overseas phone numbers offer an intimate chat with the ladies, or with some of their equally outgoing friends.

The heaviest fighting in five years has slowed reconstruction to a crawl in the deserts and oases of Kandahar, where the strict Taleban movement began in 1994, but pornography, opium and illegal alcohol are flourishing, officials say.

At least one satellite operator offers foreign channels such as eurotictv, allsex, 247Sex and transex, along with the God Channel and the Church, Miracle and Hope channels. In a country where converting to Christianity from Islam carries the death penalty, the Christian channels are just as offensive to some as the pornography, although not as popular.

"Pornography is a problem," admits new provincial police chief General Asmatullah Alizai.

"According to our Islamic rules and beliefs, people cannot accept this kind of thing. I don't want people to see this kind of film."

Gen Alizai believes pornography, drugs and alcohol, especially in a traditionalist city such as Kandahar, underline the need for president Hamid Karzai's plan to re-establish the Taleban's department for the prevention of vice and the promotion of virtue, better known as the religious police.

"We should use any means possible," he says.

Under the Taleban's rule from 1996 to 2001, when its hardline Islamist government was ousted by a US-led coalition, music and film were banned. All women in Afghanistan wear a headscarf or an all-covering burqa and they can be shunned by their community for simply appearing on TV, even with their head covered.

Porn arrived in Kandahar as soon as the Taleban left, but was generally confined to the back rooms of teahouses. Now, it is increasingly there for anyone with the right satellite subscription or a couple of dollars for a video compact disc. So far, only limited attempts have been made to block some providers.

Explicit VCDs smuggled mainly from Pakistan but also from India are on sale on the streets for a few dollars each, but the vendors are secretive and wary. Sellers at the crowded VCD and CD market don't like to discuss the trade.

"They come from Pakistan," says Farid Achmad, firmly insisting that almost all his wares go on to neighbouring Iran to the west. "They are banned. The government would not let you sell anything like this," he says uncomfortably.

Porn's growing popularity and availability comes as the Taleban re-exerts its influence across the country, especially in Kandahar and other southern provinces.

More people are turning to the insurgents, partly out of frustration at the lack of jobs and a non-drugs economy, partly for money and partly because in some areas the Taleban imposes a rough order where the government cannot - complete with their own courts. The Islamist hardliners are also trying to reimpose some of their old strictures, burning schools that admit girls and executing their teachers in front of students.

Rona Trena, 34, the head of Kandahar's provincial women's affairs department, says pornography is a problem, but one that is largely confined to a small number of young men.

"It's not a good habit to have," she says.

"But it's in the shops and some of these young men are watching it. Seeing women like this is not normal."

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Most religions like Islam and Christianity forbids watching pornographic material, yet Porn is widely available in every country in the world. On one hand people will say that adults should be able to do and watch what they like - there should be no restriction to this. On the other side, there are many vulnerable people that watch porn and the easyness to access this by children does affect their behaviour towards family members and to society as a whole.

Porn has become such a large industry and it caters for every need for men and women but it also exploits children - let’s hope the afghans don’t get an appetite for the filth that’s available in our societies today. We need to protect our children from this filth.The European Union has been trying to get a domain set up explicitly for the sex industry that will have .XXX in the url. George W Bush is trying to stop this from happening - for once in his life he is doing the right thing, he definitely gets my vote for this issue.

I hope their isn't a link between watching porn and killings/ Here is an interesting story about Ted Bundy,who was one of America's most notorious serial killers. Over a four-year period he brutally murdered and mutilated 30 women in a series of horrific sex crimes. The motives for this all-American-boy turned murderer remained a mystery until hours before his execution, when he claimed a fatal addiction had fuelled his horrific crimes. In a controversial interview with a Christian evangelist, Bundy highlighted the role pornography had played in transforming him into a murderer!