It’s hard to estimate how many LGBTQ people have been detained in Afghanistan overall since 2021, Ghoshal said, thanks to a lack of reporting channels and a fear of reprisal for speaking out.
But the Taliban certainly appear to have become more systematic in their persecution of LGBTQ people since regaining power, Ghoshal said. Some people have reported that officials are actively “hunting for them, coming to their houses, with arrest warrants issued,” she said. “I will never forget when the Taliban came to our house,” Samiar Nazari, a 22-year-old transgender man, told CNN. “Some villagers had informed the Taliban that there was a girl who wore men’s clothes.”
Nazari, who fled before later being beaten and briefly detained by the Taliban, is now in a safe country but says living under Taliban rule is “forever etched in my mind, memories of fear, helplessness, and loss of hope.” Others have been detained over content found on their phones or posted on social media, suggesting the Taliban could be using the internet to track down members of the LGBTQ community, Akbary said.
“One night I was in a taxi to come home, (and) the Taliban stopped me and the taxi driver for a search,” said Abdul, a 22-year-old gay man. “They saw my Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. All the photos and content were LGBTQ,” he said. Abdul had managed to flee to Iran following the Taliban’s takeover in 2021, and then to Turkey, but he was deported back to Afghanistan in early 2024, he said.
Speaking with CNN in October, Abdul recalled how he was taken to a “dark room” where he suffered “torture and beatings” multiple times a day. “Every night a big guy used to come to beat me up. Several times he choked me,” Abdul said. “Many times, I thought I was going to die.”
After two weeks held in this room, Abdul was transferred to a prison in Herat, northwestern Afghanistan, for a further six months, only being released when a friend paid the Taliban the equivalent of $1,200 to bail him out, he said.
His family refused to have him back due to his sexuality being exposed, he said, and he now lives in hiding again, with no support from friends or relatives. “I am still in the Taliban jail, but the only difference is that I am not inside a prison.” In February, Afghan LGBT Organization and Outright International wrote a joint letter to Rosemary DiCarlo, the UN’s under-secretary-general for political and peacebuilding affairs, highlighting a “lack of inclusion of LGBTIQ perspectives in UN engagement on Afghanistan.”
Top UN officials and global envoys met with the Taliban in Qatar in June to discuss human rights concerns. But the talks sparked a backlash from human rights organizations for excluding Afghan women and other civil society groups.
After the meeting, DiCarlo told a press conference that the “concerns and views of Afghan women and civil society were front and center, adding that those present “also discussed the need for more inclusive governance and respect for the rights of minorities.”
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