The Mahdi Army has targeted LGBT Iraqis for death.

What is the fastest way of getting killed in Iraq? Being Sunni in a Shiite neighborhood? Being American outside the Green Zone? Coming out as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered anywhere in Iraq.

Certainly, life for LGBT people in Iraq under the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein was no paradise, either; but for some time until the Gulf War in 1981, there was a flourishing nightlife at the very least. But post-Saddam Iraq has become a deadly maelstrom for queer Iraqis, as the New York Times reported yesterday.

“Gay Iraqis fear for their lives,” according to the BBC. The British LGBT newspaper Pink News reported in May that the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani removed from his website a fatwa calling for the killing of homosexuals in the “worst, most severe way possible”. But LGBT Iraqis continue to be targeted by Shiite death squads of the Badr Corps and the Sadr Militia controlled by the radical cleric Muktada al-Sadr as well as by sectarian Shiite members of the Iraqi police. Feminine men, transgendered women, and other queers are often entrapped via Internet chat rooms and then beaten, tortured, and killed.

The gay American writer and activist Doug Ireland reports that:

Haydar Faiek, aged 40, a transsexual Iraqi, was beaten and burned to death by Badr militias in the main street in the Al-Karada district of Baghdad in September 2005.

Ammar, aged 27, was abducted and shot in back of the head in Baghdad by suspected Badr militias in January 2006.

Naffeh, aged 45, disappeared in August 2005. His family were informed that he was kidnapped by the Badr organisation. His body was found in January 2006. He, too, had been subjected to an execution-style killing.

The most moving reportage on Iraq that I’ve read is from Michael Luongo, an intrepid reporter who went to there in November to hear first-hand from members of the LGBT community in Iraq. I should add by way of full disclosure that Michael is a friend of mine, but I had no idea that he was going to Iraq until I read his full-length report in GCN. I’m relieved to say that Mike has made it back home safely, but there was certainly no guarantee of that, given his itinerary. Unlike George W. Bush or Condoleezza Rice, who rarely step foot outside the Green Zone when they visit Iraq, Mike traveled throughout Baghdad as well as up to Kurdistan to talk to LGBT Iraqis and to hear their stories in person.

Those interested in helping LGBT Iraqis can contact the Abu Nawas Iraqi LGBT, which is based in the United Kingdom and is working with the British LGBT rights group OutRage!