Taliban Making ‘Kill List’ of Gay Afghans

The Taliban is a radical Sunni Islamist organization that considers gay identity haram or an affront to its interpretation of Islam. Jihadists in nearly all terrorist organizations have engaged in brutal killings of people suspected of being gay or lesbian; some jihadists support forcing gay people into gender reassignment surgery, essentially imposing a transgender identity.

While extremely hostile to LGBT people, Afghanistan has been typically permissive of a traditional practice known as bacha bazi, in which tribesmen rape young boys. The practice was common enough under the previous Afghan government that Taliban jihadists used small children as bait to attract and then kill Afghan security officers. The Afghan government’s acceptance of bacha bazi did not stop the widespread persecution of LGBT individuals, particularly gay and lesbian people.

Leading Taliban jihadists have insisted for months that they aspire to run an “inclusive” government and respect the human rights of women, which they rampantly violated while in power before America’s 2001 invasion of the country. Spokesmen for the terrorist group have specified that they have no intention, however, of respecting the human rights of people they believe to be homosexual.

“We now know for sure the Taliban has a ‘kill list’ circulating, identifying LBTQI+ persons,” Kimahli Powell, who runs the Canadian NGO Rainbow Railroad, asserted. The director appeared to suggest that Rainbow Road was among the organizations whose attempts to help imperiled Afghans escape the Taliban were used to persecute LGBT people. The organization confirmed it had received 700 evacuation requests from Afghanistan this year, most of them, presumably, after the Afghan government fell.

“[Some] individuals who have reached out to us have told us about how they’ve received a mystery email from someone claiming to be connected with Rainbow Railroad asking for their information and passport,” Powell explained. “That’s how we know the information has been leaked.”

Taliban jihadists have attacked the homes of some of these individuals. In one instance, Powell detailed, a person seeking aid from Rainbow Road received a visit from individuals suspected to be Taliban jihadists who proceeded to beat the person and burn their passport, making their departure from Afghanistan “infinitely harder.”

The Advocate reported on a separate gruesome incident in Kabul in which the Taliban killed a 24-year-old gay man. The man’s boyfriend shared the story under a pseudonym.

“I go to my home and he went to his. He said they found him. Two cars came, with Taliban in them. They said, ‘Where is his home?’ and beat him so much,” the man said. “They took him away – nobody knows where – and then they kill him.”

“Afterwards they said they brought the body and cut his body into pieces to show the people that this is what we do with gay people,” he concluded. (Breitbart / VFI News)

“God, we ask that you protect all people from persecution and harm at the hands of the Taliban.”