By: Ellaha Rasa
Yaqubi*, a teenager in Afghanistan’s western province of Herat, identifies as a woman and prefers to be called Mahnaz, but these days feels that as long as any Talib roams in Afghanistan, it’s not possible to live that life.
Mahnaz has been raised as a man, but likes to wear women’s clothes and would love to walk the streets of Herat as a woman without being bothered by anyone. That dream was once not too far from reality, Mahnaz says, but that was before the Taliban took over.
Mahnaz is one of dozens of transgenders living in western Afghanistan. At 18 years old, she says she has spent most of her young life in suffering. Born into a deeply traditional family in a conservative Herati society, Mahnaz hid this female identity in fear for her life for many years, and now is more cautious than ever before.
Transgender refers to a person whose gender identity is different to the sexual characteristics they were born with. Some transgender people may also make permanent physical changes using hormones and surgeries to align more closely with their gender identity.
These days, the transgender community is just focused on surviving. And that community is very small. At least 10 people identifying as transgender know of each other in Herat province, one of the Afghanistan’s most populated.
According to Mahnaz, some of the transgender people in Herat are hovering between hunger and death. “It is not only the freezing winter that threatens our lives. We are also unemployed and we cannot find work,” she says. “The transgender community is left alone and there is no one to help them. By God, I am very tired of the situation and unfortunately we are left here in Afghanistan.”
When the previous government collapsed in August 2021 and the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, some countries offered transgender groups special emergency visas to prevent them being persecuted or even killed. But Mahnaz did not make it onto any of the evacuation lists. Then in the first months of the Taliban rule with a heightened focus on vulnerable groups, she again hoped to leave Afghanistan, but those attempts failed.
“All the documentation is before us showing that the lives of transgender people are in danger,” she says. “But (foreign countries) are not doing anything to save them.”
Mahanz describes the situation of her community in Afghanistan as a graveyard, living in fear of violence and assault. “Transgenders are often taken to gardens and cafes, beaten and sexually assaulted,” she says. “(If found out) we will be beaten by the Taliban. Of course, sexual assaults against transgender people have been decreasing compared to the time of the former government, but this is because we live more in secret and do not dance at parties anymore.”
Mahnaz says that she knows of two transgender women, named Qadir* and Salam* who were imprisoned in a Taliban prison for six months before they were released. Rukhshana Media has tried to contact them both but was unsuccessful.
This groups tends to face more challenges in finding a job as their identity is not well understood or is even outright rejected. During the previous republican government, most transgenders supported themselves by dancing at weddings and parties, but this work is impossible now.
Such is the case for Mahnaz, whose only source of income has disappeared.
“We want to live, but we can’t,” she says. “Every day in our life is tragedy and sadness, and our only income, the dancing, has been taken away from us. We have become housebound.”
“If we leave the house, the Taliban arrest us under various pretexts, and because of this, we are like prisoners at home,” she adds.
Even before the Taliban, transgender people in Afghanistan had a difficult life. They generally experience more violence and aggression than the average person, with experiences ranging from being called derogatory nicknames like “eezak” – a derisive title – to blatant sexual assault with little recourse for justice.
Feroz*, 21, is another transgender woman in Herat. Raised as boy, Feroz realised at age 12 she identified as a girl. Speaking to Rukhshana Media, she says her life has been a brutal experience. “Since then, I have been repeatedly sexually assaulted,” she says. “I was even raped by a group of four at gunpoint once. I suffer a lot from being raped.”
Feroz claims that she was sexually assaulted by her employer many times in the places where she worked, and then she would be fired. But she says that the last 17 months that the Taliban have been in power have been the hardest of her life. She is sometimes struggling not to end her life.
“Since the Taliban came to power, I have been mostly unemployed and I think about suicide,” she says. “I have mental and emotional problems and my family’s relationship with me is not good. They put pressure on me because I am unemployed and I cannot find a job for myself.”
Feroz would like to make more permanent changes to her body to be more aligned with her identity, but she doesn’t know if it would ever be possible. “I can’t change my (physical) gender without the help of supporting organizations,” she says.
Feroz has a deep desire to dress in women’s clothes and wear makeup, but her family is against that, so she continues to live as a man.
“We were not born like this of our own will and we should not be persecuted for it,” she says.
Feroz has requested not to provide any further details of her identity for fear of being revealed.
Since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, numerous people who identify as transgender have fled the country. Many are living in Iran and Pakistan in the hope that their asylum request will be accepted in a European or American country where transgender people are more tolerated, if not accepted.
There has been a long history of persecution of transgender and other LGBT groups in Herat. One of the most well-known faces of this community, a transgender man Saboor Hussaini, is more than 60 years old. A source says he had fled Afghanistan when the Taliban arrived and is seeking asylum from a neighbouring country.
Even before Taliban rule, Hussaini faced repeated assaults and in 2020 was kidnapped and beaten, with his attackers burning parts of his body.
About a month ago, a number of LGBT people in Kabul held an indoor protest uploaded to social media that drew attention to their plight. They said that since the Taliban takeover they were being murdered, raped, and tortured.
One of the LGBT people from this campaign, who did not want to reveal his identity, told Rukhshana Media that they are living in a difficult situation. “We are under house arrest and if the situation continues, we will all perish,” he says.
For the transgender minority in Herat like Mahnaz and Feroz, they hope for a day when they can live as human beings in full alignment with their identity.
Human Rights Watch said in a 2022 report on the LGBT people and others who do not conform to rigid gender norms in Afghanistan, “have faced an increasingly desperate situation and grave threats to their safety and live,” with some facing more rejection from family and loved ones or being more targeted since the Taliban takeover.
*Note: The names of the interviewees in this report have been chosen as pseudonyms for safety reasons.
