Prostitution in Afghanistan - Brothels

Brothels

Brothels, sometimes run by foreigners or by the mafia, manage to exist in several cities of the country by paying bribes to police officers who come to raid them. There are reports of a couple of brothels in northern Afghanistan, in and around the Mazar-i-Sharif area of Balkh Province.

The capital Kabul saw an extraordinary number of Chinese brothels ("Chinese restaurants") opened in the four years following the fall of the Taliban regime. Four years later a series of police raids reduced the brothels to 3 which caters, according to Reuters, to a mainly high-income international clientele as Afghan aren't generally accepted in or, according to USA Today, to mostly Afghan men.

"There are 200 of us here in Kabul, we don't go out much. It's not safe. I've been here for two years, the money is okay. We stay indoors. We don't go out." —A female bartender from northern China, 2006