Four people from the Afghanistan LGBT+ community reveal what life has been like since the Taliban takeover
For the hundreds, if not thousands, of LGBT+ Afghans who remain trapped in Kabul, life in their home country was already imbued with a sense of impending danger.’s LGBT+ community have been forced to keep their gender identity and sexual orientation secret amid fears of intimidation at a social and even institutional level.has ushered in a new form of brutality.
‘The Taliban are going to have no mercy on LGBT people when they fully implement Sharia law and this scares the daylights out of the community. It’s not hyperbolic to say that the Taliban will do to LGBT people exactly what the Nazis did: weed out homosexuals and exterminate them. I get stressed and depressed – I don’t feel normal because it’s about one month since I tried to escape, that I tried to run away. I attempted four times to reach the airport but the Taliban didn’t allow me. I told them I had papers to enter the airport and tried to talk with them, but they just showed me their guns and said, “If you come here we will kill you”.
*Since she spoke to us, Rabia’s fears of being discovered have deepened. Her house has been destroyed by Taliban militants who had used it to take cover while fighting against members of Islamic State. With her cousin seriously injured, she had no choice but to flee again, this time to her aunt’s house.Ahmadullah, 27
When I heard, my body froze and mind stopped working, I thought it was some kind of dream. I was so shocked that I couldn’t move an inch.I had my uni bag with me – I grabbed it and ran. I didn’t know where I was going, I just kept running towards the mountains. That night I reached a village.
I keep changing locations, I used to walk at night and find abandoned houses to sleep in and find food. Sometimes, when I try to change location, I pretend to be homeless or straight. I can’t even tell Afghan people that I’m gay. I have been alone since the day the Taliban entered Kabul. It’s like hell for us – I can’t sleep, I have to stay awake.
A few days later we had Afghanistan Independence Day and came out in the street to celebrate, holding our national flag. By the end of the day, I heard the Taliban had gone to four of my friends’ homes and killed them too. While we were hiding out in the mountains, there was a knock on the door one morning. I knew it was the Taliban, so told my partner we needed to escape. We jumped from the house roof and they started firing at us. It was really heavy machine gun fire and my partner was shot.
I managed to call my friend who had a car and ask him for help. We drove in the mountains for six hours.We just feel like we are not human, like we’ve escaped from prison. We have no kind of freedom. We are already targeted – if they found us, everything would end.’ Before the takeover, I found my job as a makeup artist for women difficult, but possible after a lot of hard work. But since they’ve taken over I just find it impossible to work as a hairdresser for women in a situation like this.
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