LGBTQ people fear for their lives, says first openly gay Afghan activist

Ever since the Taliban takeover, US-based bestselling author

Nemat Sadat

— the first gay Afghan to come out publicly — has been trying to help

LGBTQ

members leave Afghanistan. Sadat had fled the country in 2013 after being fired from his teaching job at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul for being gay. In an interview, the exiled author tells Sharmila Ganesan-Ram why

LGBTQ Afghans

, who have been deprived of legal status for the last 20 years, feel they will be hunted down once the last evacuation flight leaves


What is the current status of the

LGBTQ community in Afghanistan

?
The LGBTQ community is sitting on a knife’s edge. The Taliban can be seen roaming the streets from outside of people’s homes armed with their machine guns. Many LGBTQ people I’m in contact with believe that the Taliban will start hunting them down, especially once the US and the international community make their final exit and the last evacuation plane has left. One young gay Afghan man who goes by the nickname Ahmadullah, who had previously had his father and youngest brother killed by the Taliban, is devastated as his boyfriend got executed the same day that they rolled into Kabul this week. Ahmadullah was with his boyfriend and he urged him to go home. When Ahmadullah didn’t hear back from his boyfriend, he found out from a mutual connection, that his lover was beheaded by the Taliban because they noticed he was effeminate and recognised he could be a homosexual. Ahmadullah also can’t reach any of his other LGBTQ friends and believes they have either gone into hiding and are scared to trust anyone or they are missing.

How big is the LGBTQ population there?
Nobody knows exactly but I’d venture to say upwards of 4 million — more or less — if the Kinsey scale holds true. According to the Alfred Kinsey research conducted during the mid-half of the last century, about 10% of a population is reported to be homosexual.

What about their status before the Taliban takeover?
The LGBTQ community had no legal status for the past 20 years under President Hamid Karzai or President Ashraf Ghani’s reign, and still had to conceal their gender identity and sexual orientation out of fear of honour violence from their family, being beaten or harassed by society, or fined and raped by the Afghan National Police if they found out who they were. Despite these challenges, an underground LGBTQ community flourished, meeting in small groups at hookah bars, karaoke lounges or in the privacy of their homes. They disproportionately flocked to careers in the media and were the cultural makers, creating soap operas and talk shows that touched on taboo subjects, and contests where women sang on stage without a head covering.

What’s your opinion on US president Joe Biden’s handling of Afghanistan?
President Biden has been reckless in his withdrawal from Afghanistan. I mean how can we blame Ashraf Ghani or the Afghan National Army for not defending the Afghan people when the US sold out the Afghans to the Taliban and surrendered to Pakistan’s blackmail? How can Biden not reverse course on his withdrawal plan after terrorists from across the border in Pakistan reneged on the peace agreement with their hostile takeover of a democratically elected government that represented the will of the Afghan people? Last month, Biden promised that US withdrawal would not result in the Taliban toppling the democratically elected Afghan government. Biden was wrong. While the situation deteriorates in Afghanistan, girls as young as 12 are being kidnapped from their homes and raped while Afghan soldiers and those who worked for the West are massacred, their corpses left to the wayside. US withdrawal will now result in millions of Afghan women and girls becoming sex slaves.

Tell us about how you’re trying to help.
I’m trying to help LGBTQ Afghans get asylum visas and evacuated on the chartered flights that will continue to go until the end of this month, maybe bleeding into early next month depending on how the process goes. So far, I have 125 LGBTQ Afghans on my list and I’ve sent their names to the

US State Department

to process their visa and get clearance to board one of the chartered flights. I’ve done so through two channels. One, through a contact in Kabul who works for an NGO that has offered to help me get my LGTBQ applicants approved. The other is through my Congressman Scott Peters’ office. The constituency service person at Mr Peters’ office is acting as my liaison between me and the US State Department. I know it’s impossible to get millions of LGBTQ people out from Afghanistan within two weeks. But I have set a lofty goal for myself to get at least 1,000 LGBTQ Afghans airlifted to a safe haven and resettled in the US, Canada, the UK or a European country where they can rebuild their lives.