Startled UK Marines Hassled By Gay Afghans

By Chris Stephen In Bagram

TheScotsman.net (5-24-02) 6-4-2

British marines returning from an operation deep in the Afghan mountains spoke last night of an alarming new threat - being propositioned by swarms of gay local farmers.

An Arbroath marine, James Fletcher, said: "They were more terrifying than the al-Qaeda. One bloke who had painted toenails was offering to paint ours. They go about hand in hand, mincing around the village."

While the marines failed to find any al-Qaeda during the seven-day Operation Condor, they were propositioned by dozens of men in villages the troops were ordered to search.

"We were pretty shocked," Marine Fletcher said. "We discovered from the Afghan soldiers we had with us that a lot of men in this country have the same philosophy as ancient Greeks: a woman for babies, a man for pleasure,."

Originally, the marines had sent patrols into several villages in the mountains near the town of Khost, hoping to catch up with al-Qaeda suspects who last week fought a four-hour gun battle with soldiers of the Australian SAS. The hardened troops, their faces covered in camouflage cream and weight down with weapons, radios and ammunition, were confronted with Afghans wanting to stroke their hair.

"It was hell," said Corporal Paul Richard, 20. "Every village we went into we got a group of men wearing make-up coming up, stroking our hair and cheeks and making kissing noises."

At one stage, troops were invited into a house and asked to dance. Citing the need to keep momentum in their search and destroy mission, the marines made their excuses and left. "They put some music on and ask us to dance. I told them where to go," said Cpl Richard. "Some of the guys turned tail and fled. It was hideous."

The Afghan hill tribes live in some of the most isolated communities in the country. "I think a lot of the problem is that they don,t have the women around a lot," said another marine, Vaz Pickles. "We only saw about two women in the whole six days. It was all very disconcerting."

A second problem the British found came minutes after the first helicopter touched down at one of the hilltop firebases, when local farmers appeared demanding compensation for goats they claimed had been blown off the mountains by the rotor blades. "Every time we landed a Chinook near a village, we got some irate bloke running up to us saying his goat has just got blown off the mountain ridge by the helicopter - and then he demanded a hundred dollars compensation," said Major Phil Joyce, commander of Whisky Company, one of four companies deployed.

As patrols moved away from the landing zones, the locals began pestering Afghan troops attached to the marines with ever more outrageous compensation demands - topping off at a demand from one village elder for $500 (£300) for damage to a tree by the downdraft from helicopters.

But the marines were under orders to win the "hearts and minds" of local farmers in what is one of the few remaining Taleban bastions. "I managed to barter him down to two marine pens, a pencil and a rubber," Major Joyce said. "He went away quite happy ."

http://www.news.scotsman.com/print.cfm?id=561752002&referringtemplate=http%3

Comment

From Name Witheld 6-4-2

Anyone who has lived in the Middle East could have told them this! The women are homosexual too! Although, this is a generalization, the thing about generalizations is that they are true of large portions of the populace. Homosexual is not really the right word, since they don't really consider it this. It is outlawed by the Koran, but like Catholics and the pill, it is largely an ignored prohibition. In countries where the sexes are so segregated (the home is separated into male and female rooms and when you visit the home, you go with the women to visit and your husband goes with the men) that they do not know or particularly care for one another. So they find amusement among their own kind.

It is so common, that a story from my 4 years in Saudi may illustrate: We lived for a time in a large Arab town (as opposed to a company compound like Dhahran) called Al Khobar. I was having real problems with the neighborhood boys, the 6-12 year olds. They were very destructive and roamed the neighborhood, bored and breaking out windows and smashing parked cars. My husband was a contractor in partnership with an Arab and we had rented an entire 6 unit apartment building for our own housing and for our higher level employees. The bottom floor was still empty.

After the men had gone to work, the boys would bang on the windows, breaking some, and once came in the building and slapped my daughter when she answered the door. We had tried everything, including speaking with parents and community leaders. But of course, young boys are not disciplined for harassing women. Sometimes, if I had to venture out, they would throw rocks at me with my baby in my arms! Our forman, a Yemeni, told us he would take care of it. He sat on the front stoop one day, and when the boys came around, he called and signaled to them to come over. This was an invitation to engage in sex that the boys all clearly understood, it being a common practice for men to fondle boys. They steered clear of our house after that.

In another case, my daughter used to go to an Arab neighbors house to play with their daughters when she was about 7. I had to put a stop to it when she told me they all took a bath together (children and women)! This from women that won't even take off a veil in front of a strange woman! They were obviously setting her up for sexual encounters, in fact, I consider what they did to be sexual abuse.

My daughter was too innocent to think of it in those terms at that age, so I did not make a big deal of it and make her feel victimized. Also, complaining to anyone would have probably resulted in her (or me) being jailed, not the Arabs! I just told her it was "weird" and that they should play over at our house from then on. You can imagine what 2-4 young, illiterate women do to amuse themselves when married to an old man and left home all day, unable to go out, work, or go to school. The homosexuality among the women is even more common, but less spoken of. I have many other stories from my time there that are illustrative of the common nature of homosexuality and pedophilia.

Originally posted at http://www.rense.com/general25/startledUKmarines.htm.