Afghanistan - Faces and Countryside

Afghanistan is a culturally mixed nation, a crossroads between the East and the West, and has been an ancient focal point of trade and migration. It has an important geostrategical location, connecting South, Central and Southwest Asia.
During its long history, the land has seen various invaders and conquerors, while on the other hand, local entities invaded the surrounding vast regions to form their own empires.

Since the late 1970s Afghanistan has suffered continuous and brutal civil war, which included foreign interventions in the form of the 1979 Soviet invasion and the recent 2001 U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban government. In late 2001 the United Nations Security Council authorized the creation of an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). This force is composed of NATO troops that are involved in assisting the government of President Hamid Karzai in establishing the writ of law as well as rebuilding key infrastructures in the nation.

Homosexuality and cross-dressing have been serious crimes at least as far back as the 1970s and become capital crimes in the 1990s. As of 2008, there appears that the regime change has not had much impact on the legal status of Afghanistan’s gay, lesbian, and bisexual citizens. However, among the Pashtun culture in Afghanistan, there has also been a long-standing homosexual tradition involving older men with power and poor younger men.

See the story on Gay Afghanistan.