"Homosexuality and Lesbianism have no place in Islam.

This issue is clear from

the primary source of Islam, The Holy Quran. No Muslim scholar, Imam or a leader of
a Muslim community can alter this injunction. A person committing such an act is in
violation of God's Law and should seek repentance before God gives up on him or
her. It was the people of prophet Lot (peace be on him) who started this evil act and
were severely punished by God."

So proclaims a vigorously religious ‘imam’ from his Internet pulpit, making clear the
position of the vast majority of Muslims regarding homosexuality. From the western
shores of ancient Morocco across thousands of sandy Islamic miles to the far
eastern islands of Indonesia, almost half the distance of our known world,
homosexual behavior is pronounced anathema to the faithful. The sweep of
condemnation of same-gender love is about equal to the sweep of eastern and
western Christianity in the other half of the world. So the world, one would think,
should be shorn of such an abomination wherein a man layeth with a man as a
woman.

Sex and Scripture

Except it’s not. And the simple reason is that both of these imposed belief
systems ignore and deny the natural varieties of the human psyche. There
has always been heterosexual attraction and there has always been homosexual
attraction.

To elevate and validate one over the other is to

praise the left eye over the right eye. But simple
and superstitious scribes of these faiths have
written reams of florid, passionate and volcanic
verses that embrace an artificial dichotomy of
homo-and-hetero sexual and emotional
orientation. Had they consulted the sentient
beings in their tribes instead of magical and
mystical oracles, burning bushes or delusional
visionaries, the scribes might well have written
more humane and precise books. Homoerotic
affections, legends and myths run deep into the human heart and far back into the
haze of history.

Besides its natural occurrence in our genes and neurons, another reason homosexual
behavior and desire has not been stamped out by every conceivable type of secular
cure and sacred persecution is that homosexuality serves both religion and culture
well. It is perhaps one of the great anthropological paradoxes (if not
hypocrisies) that the history and behavior of homosexuality has been
carried down through fifteen centuries by gender-segregated Muslim
cultures and, as well, by male Christian monastic confederations. (Does
anyone seriously believe that sexual favors between altar boys and clerics began in
the 20th century?) Men serving men is as old as the species and is found in many
sacred and secular societies from the ancient Egyptians and Chinese to the sportive
and warrior ranks of Greeks and Romans.

A thoughtful reader who engages in cross-cultural studies will not get far before they
discover what many western lesbigay people already know about the indigenous
and hidden homosexual tradition practiced, in local varieties, by countless
unmarried and married men in Arab/Muslim countries.

In these cultures, homosexual activity serves as a temporary (yet valid and

important) proxy stage of growth between puberty and marriage. Since there
is varying but distinct social separation of the genders in these Muslim states,
teen/young adult men develop special friendships and informal partnerships with
other males, some older, some younger.

Within these dyads most adolescents have their first

sexual experiences as they ‘practice’ on each other.
Usually the younger partner takes the passive role and the
older one the active role. Eventually, in their twenties and
early thirties, most go on to exclusive heterosexual
marriage. Others, to be sure, go on to marriage but maintain
secret sexual liaisons with other men. Often these are men
(and women) who are more truly attracted to their own
gender but would not dare to reveal it.

Social Sexual Studies

In 1997, an important book was published on this matter.

‘Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History, and
Literature’ in which Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe,
along with eight other authors, analyze the sexual shadows of Islam. One reviewer,
Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia wrote the following appraisal of
the book:

"As with so much else in the sexual realm, Islamic norms differ profoundly from
Western ones. The authors establish several points: (1) Islam treats homosexuality
far less harshly than does Judaism or Christianity. (2) Sex between men results in
part from the segregation of women and in part from the poetic and folk heritage
holding that the penetration of a pretty boy is the ultimate in sexual delight.
(3) Sex between men is "frowned upon, but accepted" so long as the participants
also marry and have children; and also if they keep quiet about this activity. (4)
The key distinction is not hetero vs. homosexual but active vs. passive; men
are expected to seek penetration (with wives, prostitutes, other males, animals); the
only real shame is attached to serving in the female role. (5) Youths usually serve in
the female role and can leave behind this shame by graduating to the male role.
(6) The great Muslim emphasis on family life renders homosexuality far less
threatening to Muslim societies than to Western ones (Muslim men seeking formally
to marry each other remains unimaginable)."

Dominant Sex with Boys

As if, coincidentally, to prove the validity of the Murray and Roscoe book, three
recent stories about sexual practices in Afghanistan--usually a subject too sensitive
for public discussion--came boldly from the 'Times of London', the 'New York Times'
and the 'Los Angeles Times'. Each report portrays a custom of social/sexual
behavior that stretches back into the thin pages of history.
As seen through today’s more politically-correct-sexually-sensitive-Judeo-Christian-
western lens, the articles describe a sexual practice that falls outside most
standards of acceptable behavior. This is, for some, an unsettling account
describing the ‘taking’ of teen/young adult boys by strong-willed men--born into and
hardened by the harsh conditions of war, deprivation, bloodshed and death--for the
purposes of sexual pleasure and trophy gloating.

Nevertheless, these male-to-male conjunctions

generally follow along old Arabic traditions. In
most modern Islamic ‘cultural’ (premarital)
homosexual behavior there is a mute
understanding that sex is mutually
consensual, temporary and that it’s a form
of companionship, if not affection, among
peers.

But an apparent distinction seems evident in

this particular Kandahar variation as reported in
the newspaper articles quoted below. The dating and courtship appears more
coercive, more opportunistic and seems to take advantage of younger guys who
almost have no other choice than to accept the money or gifts from bigger and more
powerful 'commanders' whose bit of authority is bestowed by their gang-
member status, their guns and the shattered legal/police system. The news
reporters report did not (and could not) probe into the thoughts of these youthful
men as they submit to these older 'patrons'.

A young native of Kandahar now living in Kabul was recently asked about these
arangements. He replied that the older guys throw lavish parties where they "marry"
their boytoys, showering them with gifts, especially weapons! Generally one guy is
15-20 years older than the other. The relationships can sometimes be very intense,
and tend to last 5-6 years until the boy grows up and marries a woman.

(To be sure, there are many Kandaharis who oppose the practice. But poverty and
power have always played crucial roles in shaping cultural behavior.)

Whether the activity is mutual or forceful, there is an almost universal attitude in

these eastern cultures that such sexual indulgence is not ‘gay’, that is, it's not
sex or love between two men who identify as homosexuals. (In Afghanistan it's
common for the older participants to be married with kids.) Rather, in a collective
mental shell game the meaning of sex is re-framed: heterosexual men engage in
homosexual behavior in which the younger guy is not a ‘fem’ but obedient and
passive and the older one is not a ‘butch queer’ but assertive and active.

What eventually happens to these Kandahar relationships? Some fade away, some
stop when one partner marries or moves away, and some continue for years. In
other other Muslim countries, the roles eventually change. As the older ones marry,
the younger ones mature and become the dominant partner to a younger submissive
friend. Or, as the reporter from the Los angels Times wrote,
"sometimes when the halekon <young male lovers> grow up, the older men actually
try to keep them in the family by marrying them off to their daughters."
(To many western 'gay culture' observers, all this seems at first glance to be denial
and self-deception. It stirs up, again, intriguing issues of homosexual identity vs
homosexual behavior: does behavior define identity or is identity separate from
behavior--and how do behavior and identity interface with sexual orientation...?)

Islamic ‘Human Rights’

Framing all this role-playing and sexuality is another important facet of the Islamic
prism to keep in mind as the 'Times' story is read. Despite the man-in-the-street
assertion that Islam preaches love and peace among neighbors and strangers
alike, Islamic governments over the course of history have often proven to be harsh
and authoritarian. Little value has been put upon the dignity and rights of the
individual. Expressions of protest, legal recourse and fairness, and gender equality
have been poorly served by many of the domineering male-ruled governments under
the flag of Islam. (Indeed, the Christian west is hardly free of its share of oppressive
rulers and statutes as well.)

In another one of many recent books about Islam, Ann Elizabeth Mayer has written
‘Islam and Human Rights: Tradition and Politics’ (1998), in which she compares
Islamic law with international human rights laws and concludes that these two are
not compatible. This she attributes to the belief that Islam is divinely commanded
from God and criticizing it is considered blasphemous.

The author goes on to make an unsettling

observation: "Islamic ‘human rights’ can
offer no means for protecting the individual
against state-approved Islamic laws and
policies that violate international human
rights laws." Thus, Muslim theocratic states
exist by asserting Islamic law over secular
humanitarian law at the cost of freedoms of their
citizens, female and male. The result is that
violations of international human rights,
especially for women and gays, are justified by
oppressive governments using the ‘higher’
Koranic dictates.

With these referents in mind, about traditional Islamic sexuality and human
rights concepts, the ‘Times’ story is reprinted here with its observations and
conversations heard on the Taliban-free streets of Kandahar. (This was once the
capital of the extremist leader Mullah Omar who rode around in expensive SUV's
listening to CD's while dictating to the impoverished faithful that the playing of music
was sinful.)

(1)
Los Angeles Times
April 3, 2002
Kandahar's Lightly Veiled Homosexual Habits

Society: Restrictions on relations with women lead to greater prevalence of liaisons

between men, a professor says.
By MAURA REYNOLDS, KANDAHAR, Afghanistan

In his 29 years, Mohammed Daud has seen the faces of perhaps 200 women. A few
dozen were family members. The rest were glimpses stolen when he should not have
been looking and the women were caught without their face-shrouding burkas.

"How can you fall in love with a girl if you can't see her face?" he asks.

Daud is unmarried and has sex only with men and boys. But he does not
consider himself homosexual, at least not in the Western sense. "I like boys, but
I like girls better," he says. "It's just that we can't see the women to see if they are
beautiful. But we can see the boys, and so we can tell which of them is beautiful."

Daud, a motorbike repairman who asked that only his two first names and not his
family name be used, has a youthful face, a jaunty black mustache and a post-
Taliban clean shaven chin. As he talks, his knee bounces up and down, an involuntary
sign of his embarrassment.

"These are hard questions you are asking," he says. "We don't usually talk about
such things."

Though rarely acknowledged, the prevalence of sex between Afghan men is an

open secret, one most observant visitors quickly surmise. Ironically, it is
especially true here in Kandahar, which was the heartland of the puritanical Taliban
movement.

It might seem odd to a Westerner that such a sexually repressive society is marked
by heightened homosexual activity. But Justin Richardson, a professor of
psychiatry at Columbia University, says such thinking is backward--it is
precisely the extreme restrictions on sexual relations with women that lead
to greater prevalence of the behavior.

"In some Muslim societies where the prohibition against premarital

heterosexual intercourse is extremely high--higher than that against sex between
men--you will find men having sex with other males not because they find them
most attractive of all but because they find them most attractive of the limited
options available to them," Richardson says.

In other words, sex between men can be seen as the flip side of the
segregation of women. And perhaps because the ethnic Pushtuns who dominate
Kandahar are the most religiously conservative of Afghanistan's major ethnic groups,
they have, by most accounts, a higher incidence of homosexual relations.

Visitors might think they see the signs. For one thing, Afghan men tend to be more
intimate with other men in public than is common in the West. They will kiss, hold
hands and drape their arms around each other while drinking tea or talking.

Moreover, there is a strong streak of dandyism among

Pashtuns males. Many line their eyes with kohl, stain their
fingernails with henna or walk about town in clumsy, high-
heeled sandals.

The love by men for younger, beautiful males, who are called
halekon, is even enshrined in Pashtuns literature. A popular poem by Syed Abdul
Khaliq Agha, who died last year, notes Kandahar's special reputation. "Kandahar has
beautiful halekon," the poem goes. "They have black eyes and white cheeks."

But a visitor who comments on such things is likely to be told they are not signs of
homosexuality. Hugging doesn't mean sex, locals insist. Men who use kohl and henna
are simply "uneducated." Regardless, when asked directly, few deny that a significant
percentage of men in this region have sex with men and boys. Just ask Mullah
Mohammed Ibrahim, a local cleric.

"Ninety percent of men have the desire to commit this sin," the mullah says. "But
most are right with God and exercise control. Only 20 to 50% of those who want to
do this actually do it." Following the mullah's math, this suggests that between
18% and 45% of men here engage in homosexual sex--significantly higher
than the 3% to 7% of American men who, according to studies, identify themselves
as homosexual.

That is a large number to defy the strict version of Islam practiced in these parts,
which denounces sex between men as taboo. Muslims seeking council from religious
elders on the topic will find them unsympathetic. "Every person has a devil inside
him," says Ibrahim. "If a person commits this sin, it is the work of the devil." The
Koran mandates "hard punishment" for offenders, the mullah explains. By tradition
there are three penalties: being burned at the stake, pushed over the edge of a cliff
or crushed by a toppled wall.

During its reign in Kandahar, the Taliban implemented the latter. In February 1998, it
used a tank to push a brick wall on top of three men, two accused of sodomy and the
third of homosexual rape. The first two died; the third spent a week in the hospital
and, under the assumption that God had spared him, was sent to prison. He served
six months and fled to Pakistan.

Apparently to discourage post-Taliban visitors, the owners of a nearby house have

begun rebuilding on the site. "A lot of foreigners came and started interviewing
people," says Abdul Baser, a 24-year-old neighbor, who points out the trench where
the men were crushed. "Since then they have rebuilt the wall."

But many accuse the Taliban of hypocrisy on the issue of homosexuality. "The
Taliban had halekon <young male lovers>, but they kept it secret," says one anti-
Taliban commander, who is rumored to keep two halekon. "They hid their halekon in
their madrasas," or religious schools.

It's not only religious authorities who describe homosexual sex as common among
the Pashtuns.Dr. Mohammed Nasem Zafar, a professor at Kandahar Medical
College, estimates that about 50% of the city's male residents have sex
with men or boys at some point in their lives. He says the prime age at which
boys are attractive to men is from 12 to 16--before their beards grow in. The
adolescents sometimes develop medical problems, which he sees in his practice,
such as sexually transmitted diseases and sphincter incontinence. So far, the doctor
said, AIDS does not seem to be a problem in Afghanistan, probably because the
country is so isolated.

"Sometimes when the halekon grow up, the older men actually try to keep them in
the family by marrying them off to their daughters," the doctor says. Zafar cites a
local mullah whom he caught once using the examination table in the doctor's one-
room clinic for sex with a younger man. "If this is our mullah, what can you say for
the rest?" Zafar asks.

Richardson, the psychiatry professor, says it would be wrong to call Afghan men
homosexual, since their decision to have sex with men is not a reflection of
what Westerners call gender identity. Instead, he compares them to prison
inmates: They have sex with men primarily because they find themselves in a
situation where men are more available as sex partners than are women. "It is
something they do," he notes, "not something they are."

Daud, the motorbike repairman, would concur that the segregation of women lies at
the heart of the matter. He says his first sexual experience with a man occurred
when he was 20, about the time he realized that he would have difficulty marrying.
In Pashtuns culture, the man has to pay for his wedding and for gifts and
clothes for the bride and her family. For many men, the bill tops $5,000--such an
exorbitant sum in this impoverished country that some men, including Daud, are
dissuaded from even trying.

"I would like to get married, but the economic situation in our country makes it
hard," Daud says. Daud talked about his sex life only in private and after being
assured that no photos would be taken.

"I have relations with different boys--some for six months, some for one month.
Some are with me for six years," he says. "The problem is also money. If you want
to have a relationship with a boy, you have to buy things for him. That's
why it's not bad for the boy. Some relationships need a lot of money, some not so
much. Sometimes I fix a motorbike and give it to him as a present."

It is not easy to conduct homosexual affairs, he admits. Home is out of the question.
"If my father were to find me, he'd kick me out of the house," Daud says. "If you
want to have sex, you have to find a secret place. Some go to the mountains
or the desert."

Opinions differ as to whether homosexual

practices in Kandahar are becoming more
open or more closed since the Taliban was
defeated. For instance, after anti-Taliban forces
arrived in the city in early December, some
Westerners reported seeing commanders going
about town openly with their halekon. But that
has changed in recent weeks since Kandahar's
new governor, Gul Agha Shirzai, issued an order
banning boys under 18 from living with troops.
Officially, the ban is aimed at ending the practice
of using children as soldiers.

"It is not that way," says one of the governor's top aides, Engineer Yusuf Pashtun,
objecting to the insinuation that the boys may have been used for sex. The
governor's order said only that "no boys should be recruited in the army before the
age of 18," he adds.

Still, the anti-Taliban commander, who is close to Shirzai, acknowledged that one
goal of the order was to keep halekon out of the barracks. The move simply
drove the practice underground, he says.

Zafar, the doctor, says that in the community at large the Taliban frightened many
men into abstinence. "Under the Taliban, no more than 10% practiced homosexual
sex," he says. "But now the government isn't paying attention, so it may go back up
to 50%."

But Daud thinks the opposite may happen. If coeducation returns and the dress
code for women eases, men will have fewer reasons to seek solace in the
beds--or fields or storage rooms--of other men.

"As for me, if I find someone and see she is beautiful, I will send my mother over to
her" to ask for her hand in marriage, Daud says. "I'm just waiting to see her."
(End the 'Times' story)

Secrets and Traditions

Despite the apparent homosexual behavior of the men in the story, same-sex
attraction is, paradoxically, scorned in the Afghan culture. Truly 'gay' men and
women deeply hide their secrets and seek no attention. Homosexuality is not
understood as anything natural or acceptable and the idea of mutual same-sex
pleasure or romance is alien to the vast majority who have never encountered such
ideas.

It's impossible to accurately analyze the motives of the Pashstuns who favor young
men. Most of these 'daddies' are essentially straight but, lacking status in their
meager lives, feel a certain 'swagger' of social enhancement for having a
trophy boy.

As for sexual pleasure it's hard to say if it's anything other than pleasurable anal
penetration for the the dominant partner, his role being the same as with a woman;
his masculinity remains unquestioned. It's improbable he would reciprocate the
pleasure for the submissive younger partner since it would mean being passive
and therefore unacceptable to his manly self-image.

For some of these married-with-kids men, it's also possible that some of them
are really gay and this traditional conquest of younger guys serves their
secret very well. It'easy to understand that such a partner would desire to go
further than his straight peers in returning the pleasure--and possible romantic
affection--to his companion. It would seem an ideal arrangement for a closeted
person.

But even here the gay man runs a risk since the younger man is probably
heterosexual and knows (after comparing notes with his own peers) the roles and
limits expected of both of them. If the young one suspects the older one enjoys the
intimacy too much too often or if he goes too far (perhaps switching psoitions)
suspicions and rumors might arise. And there could hardly be a greater fear than
being exposed as a homosexual and humiliated in front of one's family, friends
or community. For the authentic gay man, sexual desire can put him in harm's way
whether he lies about his truth or is truthful about his lie.
(2)
Washington Blade
December 21, 2001
New Afghan Rulers Better for Gays?
By Lou Chibbaro Jr.

<In this story, there is no reference to specific sexual behavior. Rather it’s a larger
overview of the new government’s hoped-for attitude toward legislating human rights
to a long oppressed populace--including gay and lesbian citizens.>

WASHINGTON, D.C.: The interim government scheduled to take office in

Afghanistan on Dec. 22 will discontinue executions of people charged with
sodomy and will likely adopt a more tolerant policy on human rights for gays,
according to a spokesperson for the Northern Alliance, the Afghan military faction
that fought against the Taliban.

Haron Amin, who appears frequently on U.S. television

news programs on behalf of the Northern Alliance, said Dec.
18 that leaders of Afghanistan's newly installed interim
government are outraged over human rights abuses by
the Taliban regime and will embrace the principles of
human rights. "This issue [of anti-gay persecution] would
have to be brought up in a court," he said. "The Taliban
killed people for all kinds of reasons, not just sexual
orientation."

The international human rights group Amnesty

International has documented cases where Taliban
authorities executed men charged with sodomy by
using military tanks to topple cement walls on top of
them, crushing them to death.

Amin said he could not predict how the new interim government would address
specific human rights issues, such as anti-gay persecution, but said he was certain
the government-sponsored abuses of women and minorities under the Taliban
government would be discontinued. "The new administration will be much more
tolerant," he said.
Amin's comments came as the Northern Alliance--in coordination with the U.S.
bombing campaign--ousted the Taliban from power. The bombing was part of the
U.S.-led war against terrorism that began after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Several leading Afghan political factions, including Northern Alliance members,

reached an agreement to form a post-Taliban, interim government following a series
of meetings last month in Bonn, Germany. The factions selected Hamid Karzai, an
ethnic Pashtun tribal leader with strong ties to the West, as the interim
government's prime minister. Karzai is scheduled to take office Saturday, Dec.
22.New leader more moderate?

Daniel Brumberg, a professor of government at Georgetown University's school of

international relations, said Karzai is known as a moderate who holds
"secularist" views on the subject of religion and government. Brumberg said
that while Afghanistan's conservative, Islamic traditions would make it unlikely that
Karzai would openly embrace gay rights, he said the changing conditions
brought about by the ouster of the Taliban will enable Karzai to at least put an end to
draconian practice such as summary executions of gays. "This will be a power-
sharing government, so there may be a lessening of Islamic fundamentalism,"
Brumberg said. "But it won't be a secularist state any time soon."

Since the United States began its war against

terrorism in late September, gay rights
advocates have expressed concern that many of
the Arab and Islamic countries that signed
on as coalition partners in the war routinely
treat gays as criminals.

For example, some coalition partners, including

Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the United Arab
Emirates, have laws that call for the death
penalty for sodomy, similar to the laws adopted by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

Gay rights organizations, including the International Lesbian & Gay Human
Rights Commission, said they recognize the need for the United States to align
itself with Islamic and Arab nations in the war against terrorism. But they said the
United States and other Western allies should use their relationship with
Arab and Islamic countries to persuade those governments to improve
conditions for gays. The Bonn accord will help Human rights groups such as
Amnesty International note that the so-called Bonn agreement, which established
the framework for the interim government in Afghanistan, includes language calling
for the establishment of an independent commission to monitor human rights and to
investigate human rights violations.

The agreement calls for the United Nations to assist the commission. "Amnesty
International believes there is some good human rights language in the
Bonn text that can be built upon in the future," said Alistair Hodgett, the group's
spokesperson. "References to human rights, social justice, international law, and the
rule of law are particularly welcome."
Hodgett said that while the Bonn agreement is silent on the question of anti-gay
persecution, he is hopeful that the agreement's call for the establishment of an
independent judiciary and the creation of a pluralistic democracy would lay the
groundwork for curtailing persecution of minorities, including gays.

The U.S. government also plans to cite the Bonn

agreement as a means of encouraging the new
Afghan government to respect the human rights
of all groups, said Richard Boucher, a
spokesperson for the State Department.

In a press briefing on Dec. 14, Boucher said

human rights "has been very much a part"
of the U.S. effort to bring about change in
Afghanistan. "After the horrible excesses of the
Taliban and some of the others who have been in
Afghanistan, I think Afghans themselves
understand this to be a critical issue," Boucher said.

The human rights commission established under the Bonn agreement, Boucher said,
calls on the new government to develop institutions to protect human rights. "And
this remains an important goal of the United States," he said.

Gay Muslims hopeful Faisal Alam, founder of the gay Islamic group Al Fatiha
(http://www.al-fatih.net), said his group is monitoring the latest developments in
Afghanistan and is cautiously optimistic that the climate for gays there will improve,
at least somewhat.

"We know the new government is likely to continue Islamic traditions," Alam
said. "My feeling and my hope is the new government won't kill gay people. But we
are not likely to see gays supported." Alam said that while groups have formed
over the years representing gays in a number of Islamic countries, he is unaware of
the existence of any gay Afghan group.

The lack of such an organization, and the lack of any visible presence of a gay
community in Afghanistan, means that those who favor improvements in the
treatment of gays in Afghanistan must direct their attention "to our own
governments," Alam said. "We should put pressure on the United States to take a
stand on human rights for lesbians and gays in all countries, including Afghanistan,"
he said.

The Revolutionary Association of the

Women of Afghanistan, which formed in the
1970s in opposition to the Soviet Union's
occupation of Afghanistan, has called for a
secularist government with a complete
separation of church and state.

Alam and Michael Heflin, director of Out

Front, an Amnesty International project that
monitors anti-gay persecution, said RAWA's
strong human rights positions and its outspoken
efforts to end discrimination against
women in Afghanistan make the group a potential ally for Afghan gays.

The group's extensive writings on the Internet make no direct mention of gay rights.
The group did not respond to an e-mail message seeking comment on gay issues. A
Baltimore-based representative of RAWA, who is affiliated with the University of
Maryland, did not return a call by press time.

Mixed record for Alliance

On its Web site (http://www.rawa.false.net/index.html), RAWA warns that the

Northern Alliance and other Afghan military and political factions that have
fought against the Taliban have themselves engaged in human rights violations
against women and other minorities. "All of them have a [rifle] in one hand and the
[Koran] in the other to kill, intimidate, detain and mutilate our people arbitrarily," an
essay on the RAWA Web site says.
The essay was especially critical of the Northern Alliance, saying its leadership was
responsible, in part, for repressive policies against women prior to the Taliban
takeover. Amin, the Northern Alliance spokesperson, said one or two of the seven
factions that made up the Northern Alliance in the early 1990s engaged in human
rights violations. He said the other factions condemned these abuses.

"Our policy has been to condemn, not condone, human rights violations," Amin said.
"We support bringing to justice those who perpetrated human rights violations."
Brumberg, the Georgetown University professor, said one of the Northern Alliance's
leaders, Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was the recognized leader of Afghanistan before
the Taliban takeover in 1997, is an Islamic fundamentalist who is believed to be
responsible for some human rights abuses.

Brumberg noted that, with Rabbani's allies

playing a significant role in the new interim
government, the issue of whether anti-gay
persecution will end remains in question. "Most
of the players come from factions and groups
that don't have a good record on human rights,"
Brumberg said. "So the best you can expect
is that the new players will just ignore gay
issues and will not continue with the
excesses of the Taliban."

With Rabbani passed over for the post of prime minister in favor of Karzai, Brumberg
said reports have surfaced that the interim government is considering appointing
Rabbani as the head of a newly created Afghan Supreme Court. Such a court would
be responsible, among other things, for hearing cases involving human rights
abuses. To call for trials or investigations of past human rights violations, including
the persecution of gays, "will open a can of worms for these new people coming to
power," Brumberg said, because many of them have been involved in such violations.

"I can't imagine in all of this there will be too much emphasis on gay
rights," he said. "I can't imagine there will be any emphasis on gay rights. But it's
possible that the new regime would at least curtail some of the abuses of gays
and women that occurred in the past. That may be about all you could expect."
(End of Blade report)

Two more similar stories about the recurrence of

Pashtun homosexuality, from the New York
Times (February 2002) and Times of London
(January 2002), can be found in the Afghanistan
News & Reports 2002-04 .on this site.