Kandahar comes out of the closet


FROM TIM REID IN KANDAHAR

Our correspondent sees the gay capital of South Asia throw off strictures of the Taleban

NOW that Taleban rule is over in Mullah Omar?s former southern stronghold, it is not only televisions, kites and razors which have begun to emerge.

Visible again, too, are men with their ashna, or beloveds: young boys they have groomed for sex.

Kandahar?s Pashtuns have been notorious for their homosexuality for centuries, particularly their fondness for naive young boys. Before the Taleban arrived in 1994, the streets were filled with teenagers and their sugar daddies, flaunting their relationship.

It is called the homosexual capital of south Asia. Such is the Pashtun obsession with sodomy ? locals tell you that birds fly over the city using only one wing, the other covering their posterior ? that the rape of young boys by warlords was one of the key factors in Mullah Omar mobilising the Taleban.