SOON AFTER American troops entered Afghanistan following the events of 9/11/2001, reports began to appear in major press outlets documenting a phenomenon that had previously received scant attention: widespread homosexual activity among Afghan men, in particular among the Pashtun of the southern region of Kandahar. It seemed that Western forces sent into Afghanistan to liberate Afghan women had unwittingly liberated Afghan homosexuals, and Western journalists weren’t sure what to make of that. The idea of homosexuality among rugged Afghan fighters was treated—often within the same article—both as a cultural curiosity and as an instance of abusive pedophilia. In the end, these Western press’s accounts revealed at least as much about current Western fears and prejudices as about the local practices they concerned.
Shortly after the 9/11 attack, an article titled “Repressed Homosexuality?” appeared in The Times of London (October 5, 2001) suggesting a link between misogyny and homosexuality within the Taliban. A few months later a piece called “Kandahar Comes out of the Closet,” also in the Times (January 12, 2002), offered anecdotal evidence of the re-emergence of visible homosexual activity in the Kandahar region following the defeat of the Taliban. This story was picked up in The New York Post under the title “A Gay Old Afghan Time Again.” Two days later, The New Yorker published a lengthy report by Jon Lee Anderson on post-Taliban Kandahar in which he too broached the subject of homosexual activity. At last, The New York Times weighed in with a piece called “Shh, It’s an Open Secret: Warlords and Pedophilia” (Feb. 21, 2002). A spate of articles followed with titles like “Kandahar’s Lightly Veiled Homosexual Habits” (LA Times, April 3) and “The Royal Marines and a Gay Warlord” (Sun Herald [Sydney], June 9). Even USA Today (June 3) got into the act with a piece that discussed the threat of AIDS in post-Taliban Afghanistan, a nation seen as particularly vulnerable because of “promiscuity and homosexuality without the use of condoms.”
What makes these reports of open homosexual activity in Kandahar surprising is that they seem to contrast so markedly with the repressive policies of the Taliban—and Islamic societies in general. The official Taliban punishment for homosexual activity was to topple a stone wall upon the offender (most died from the experience but the occasional survivor was set free). Although this particular punishment was confined to Afghanistan, the persecution of homosexuals was and remains widespread throughout the Middle East. As Surina Kahn of the International Lesbian and Gay Human Rights Commission (ilghrc) has observed: “Homophobia runs through mainstream, conservative, and fundamentalist elements of Islam.” Moreover, in recent years even some of the more progressive governments in the Middle East have been cracking down on homosexual activity in order to appease increasingly powerful and vocal fundamentalist groups. This was illustrated by the arrest of 52 suspected homosexuals in Egypt in May 2001 at a riverboat disco on the charge of “practicing debauchery with men.”
Against this backdrop the open homosexuality of Pashtun men might seem the height of social tolerance. However, when read within the context of Western views of childhood sexuality, the love of youths (referred to as ashnas or haluks) among the Pashtun of Kandahar became a disturbing example of pedophilia. Several of these reports noted that the rape and kidnapping of youths had increased in the years preceding the Taliban takeover, and that the Taliban persecution of homosexual activity had been greeted by many Afghanis with enthusiasm. The tendency of Western observers to focus on instances of abuse was matched by a tendency to reduce same-sex relations to a Pashtun “obsession with sodomy.” Despite the jocular tone of these exposés, their subtext was clearly aimed at discrediting the Pashtun tradition by equating it with the ultimate American taboo, adult sex with minors.
A Secret in Plain View
Modern Western cultures, particularly Anglo-American ones, construct homosexuality as a secret—as the secret, according to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in The Epistemology of the Closet (1990); but this is not necessarily the way that other cultures have constructed it. Western journalists relentlessly projected onto Kandahar the two great secrets of contemporary American society: closeted homosexuality and child abuse. Viewing homosexuality as something that’s kept secret, Western journalists found the patterns of silence and disclosure in Afghanistan to be rather baffling. They noted, on the one hand, a reluctance on the part of Kandaharis to discuss their homosexual liaisons. When asked about these relationships by one reporter (a female), a local contact replied: “These are hard questions you are asking. We don’t usually talk about such things,” Tim Reid of The Times of London noted the Kandaharis’ reticence and accused local parents of “lying” when they, “who know in their hearts the nature of the relationship [between their son and an older man], say that their son is working for the man.” Of course, what Reid calls a lie others might see as a tactful way of refusing to discuss a private matter.
But if Kandaharis seem unwilling to speak about their sex lives, as Tim Reid noted, “there appears to be no shame or furtiveness” in the behavior of male-male couples. Michael Griffin, also of the Times, reflecting on the history of these relations, declared that “in Pashtun society, man-woman love was the one that dared not speak its name: boy courtesans conducted their affairs openly.” Reid wrote of pre-1994 Kandahar, where “the streets were filled with teenagers and their sugar daddies, flaunting their relationship.” It’s a bit ironic that Reid’s exposé was titled “Kandahar Comes out of the Closet,” for it promises an act of disclosure that the Pashtuns fail to deliver. At the same time, the Pashtuns’ behavior suggests a lack of shame that’s inconsistent with the Western view of “the closet.” Reid seems to be caught in the paradox of Western sexual discourse, which (as Foucault argued) is organized around the imperative to control sexual behavior by talking about it. In the end, Reid squares Kandahari behavior with Western expectations only by castigating the Pashtun for “lying” to avoid the subject and for “flaunting” their behavior in public.
The other Big Secret is that of pedophilia, the secret within the secret of homosexuality in the popular imagination, the ultimate taboo. Despite statistical evidence demonstrating that pedophilia in the West is more common among heterosexual men, the association of homosexuality and the sexual abuse of children remains prominent in Western anti-gay discourse, propelling “save our children” campaigns to restrict their contact with gay adults. By constructing age-stratified homosexual activity in Kandahar as pedophilia, Western journalists provided themselves a link to the ever-popular issue of child abuse—especially hot, what with the unfolding scandal in the Catholic Church. Needless to say, Western reports on age-stratified homosexuality in Kandahar typically stressed the “innocence” of the minors involved. For example, Reid wrote that Kandaharis preferred “naïve young boys,” while the Post described them as “fresh-faced.”
In their reporting Western journalists insisted on reducing relationships that are often long-term emotional bonds to a crude sexual bargain. The New York Times’ Craig Smith, for example, translated the term haliq, which crudely means “beautiful boy,” as “a boy for sex.” Michael Griffin, while noting the “rich tradition of homosexual passion” celebrated in Pashtun poetry and dance, nonetheless referred to it as “male prostitution.” Reid put forth that boys are “groomed for sex” with an older man, which is “usually a terrible fate for the boys concerned.” Without a shred of evidence, he described the courting of an ashna, which typically involves elaborate and expensive gift-giving. Smith’s contact provided the following description of this courtship: “‘If you want a haliq—‘a boy for sex’—you have to follow the boy for a long time before he will agree,’ said Daud, smiling at Fareed in a hostel in Kandahar. ‘At first he was afraid, so I bought him some chocolate and gave him a lot of money,’ said Daud, laughing. ‘I went step by step, and after about six or seven months, he agreed.’”
The fact is that these relationships may last for many years; and, as one contact noted, “sometimes when the halekon [sic]grow up [and are no longer sexually desirable], the older men actually try to keep them in the family by marrying them off to their daughters” (LA Times, April 3, 2002). While Craig Smith reported that his contact, Mr. Fareed, “does not regret being lured into a relationship by his older friend,” his use of the word “lured” again portrayed the ashna as an unwilling victim.
Tim Reid pronounced solemnly that “once the boy falls into the man’s clutches, he is marked for life,” but added immediately that “the Kandaharis accept these relationships as part of their culture.” But if indeed they’re accepted, why would someone be “marked for life”? This non sequitur reveals that Reid merely assumed that psychic trauma and social stigma could be the only consequence of these relationships. In fact, evidence from Islamic cultures that have a tradition of age-stratified bonding suggests that the matter is forgotten when the minor comes of age. “[N]o one,” writes Stephen O. Murray in Homosexualities (2000), “not even those who remember it from personal experience, will mention in his presence (or, probably, at all) his pre-adult sexual behavior. His male honor depends on his conduct as an adult.”
Another of Reid’s underlying assumptions about homosexuality is revealed in his statement that the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, suppressed homosexual activity “despite the Taliban disdain for women, and the bizarre penchant of many for eyeliner.” The New York Post, which picked up Reid’s story, recapitulated his strange logic: “Despite the regime’s hatred of women and penchant for eyeliner, homosexuality was banned.” Like the association of homosexuality with misogyny, the attempt to equate the Taliban’s use of eyeliner with homosexual activity depends on a rusty Western stereotype that seems to have life in it yet. Jon Lee Anderson’s article in The New Yorker implied a connection between homosexuality and effeminacy by juxtaposing a report on the enduring tradition of pederasty among the Pashtun with a description of local practices that include the use of eyeliner and toe-nail polish and the wearing of colorful, high-heeled sandals a size or two too small—which “means that you mince and wobble as you walk.”
Maura Reynolds of The LA Times noted that “there is a strong streak of dandyism among Pashtun males. Many line their eyes with kohl, stain their fingernails with henna or walk about town in clumsy, high-heeled sandals.” But this equation makes sense only if we accept two Western assumptions: that homosexuality and effeminacy are automatically linked; and that the practices described are in fact “effeminate.” By that logic, turning to the West, what are we to conclude about 18th-century aristocrats in their wigs, face powder, tights, and high heels? Reynolds’ own research should caution against such simplifications. She quotes one local source as saying: “Hugging doesn’t mean sex, locals insist. Men who use kohl and henna are simply ‘uneducated.’” Moreover, her contact Daud, who’s unmarried and has sex only with men and boys, “does not consider himself homosexual, at least not in the Western sense.” And although he has never been physically intimate with a woman, he assures Reynolds: “I like boys, but I like girls better.”
The Making of a Minority
Western views on homosexuality can be neatly divided into two overarching traditions: a Freudian school that sees all sexuality as “polymorphous” and homosexuality as one position on a fluid continuum; and a gay liberationist view that sees homosexuality as a distinct identity analogous to that of an ethnic minority. In Kandahar, there is clearly no sense in which homosexuality constitutes a minority identity—but this did not prevent Western journalists from constantly using the language of the Western gay rights movement to describe it. Thus, for example, faced with estimates from her informants that “between 18% and 45% of men [in Kandahar]engage in homosexual sex,” Maura Reynolds observed dryly that this is “significantly higher than the 3% to 7% of American men who, according to studies, identify themselves as homosexual.”
Journalists repeatedly used Western concepts such as “gay” and “the closet” to characterize the Kandahar situation, thus imposing their notion of homosexuality as a minority identity. The term “gay” is used in the title of the New York Post article—“A Gay Old Afghan Time Again”—as well as in the article itself: “Men accused of being gay were executed by having a wall toppled on them.” The word also appears in the headline of Smucker and Kili’s story, “The Royal Marines and a Gay Warlord,” even though the Afghan doctor quoted by Reynolds cautions that, among the Kandaharis, “homosexuality is what they do, not what they are.” The picture of homosexual behavior that emerges in even the shortest press accounts is complicated and, to the Western eye, contradictory. Smucker and Kili’s article profiles an Afghan warlord, Malim Jan, who has “two wives and ‘several boyfriends,’” and who has now taken a fancy to the Royal Marines visiting his camp.
Another way that journalists like Craig Smith and Maura Reynolds try to reconcile the evidence for polymorphous sexual desire with Western binarism is by interpreting the widespread homosexual activity as an aberration, a product of the extreme segregation of women in traditional Muslim cultures. This segregation presumably places women sexually out of bounds, forcing men to go elsewhere for gratification. And yet, as Tim Reid points out, the men who court adolescent boys are typically married with children, while the “gay warlord” profiled by Smucker and Kili has “two wives and ‘several boyfriends.’”
Michael Griffin appears initially to follow a similar line of argument, attributing the popularity of homosexual sex to the Taliban’s extreme misogyny or “gynæophobia.” Near the end of the article, however, he writes that the Taliban’s “gynæophobia appeared [to be]the product of a repressed homosexuality” (italics mine). Here he reverses the terms of his original argument, namely that homosexuality is the product of gynaeophobia. Which is it, then? By arguing that homosexual activity is not an effect of misogyny but rather its cause, Griffin seems to be positing a primary homosexual desire, albeit a repressed one, that will not simply disappear with the eventual liberation of Afghan women.
Whatever the cause of homosexuality in Kandahar, the future of same-sex relations there is uncertain. While some predict an increase in tolerance of homosexual activity with the defeat of the Taliban, a recent law forbidding “beardless youths” in the army appears intended to restrict the practice of man-boy love—a possible reaction to the sudden Western interest in this subculture. This may signal a broader crackdown on homosexual activity throughout Afghan society. Moreover, the slow liberation of Afghan women and the opening of Afghanistan to the West promise to influence the construction of (homo)sexual behavior there in unpredictable ways, as a deeply traditional Islamic society, suddenly in the world spotlight, comes to terms with this sudden invasion of modernity.
Brian James Baer, associate professor of Russian Literature and Translation at Kent State University, is presently completing a book on the representation of homosexuality in post-Soviet culture.
