Content warning: This story includes topics that are likely to make some readers feel uncomfortable.
“It’s suffocating and you have to fear for your life with every breath you take,” says Nemat Sadat, author and Executive Director of Roshaniya, an organisation that helps LGBTQ+ Afghans facing persecution in the country. “Afghanistan under Taliban rule is the most unbearable place in the world for LGBTQ+ people.” Following the withdrawal of British and American forces in August 2021, Afghanistan quickly fell to the Taliban - instantly changing the lives of those living there. Sadat says members of the LGBTQ+ community are an “extremely at-risk” population, with cases of torture and killings common: “When the West was involved in Afghanistan, LGBTQ+ Afghans had an invisible buffer, civil society and the international community kept Daesh and Taliban and their ilk at arm’s length. Now, you have LGBTQ+ Afghans virtually outnumbered by a society that wishes nothing more than to rid all homosexuals and transgenders.”
Although the situation has rapidly deteriorated in the year since the West’s departure, Afghanistan has never been a great place for LGBTQ+ people. President Ashraf Ghani’s government passed a law explicitly criminalising
