Historical context: HRW 'They Want Us Exterminated' (2009) — Mahdi Army death squads
This is a historical reference, included because the patterns documented here continue to shape risk assessments today.
In August 2009, Human Rights Watch published “They Want Us Exterminated: Murder, Torture, Sexual Orientation and Gender in Iraq,” a 67-page investigation documenting a sustained campaign of violence against gay men in Iraq from 2003 through 2009. The report concluded that at least hundreds of men were killed for being or being perceived as gay, with many more tortured.
The pattern documented
- Primary perpetrators: Mahdi Army (Jaysh al-Mahdi) militants, along with other Shi’a militias active in the post-2003 power vacuum. Some Sunni militants in Anbar were also involved in similar attacks against perceived gay men in their areas.
- Methods: Public assassinations, kidnap-and-torture-then-kill, anal rape with sharp objects (a method documented in multiple cases as a deliberate signature), and the gluing-shut of victims’ anuses with industrial adhesive (documented as a specific and distinctive method).
- Targets: Men perceived as effeminate, men known to attend underground gay gatherings, men identified through networks of informants, and partners of men already targeted.
- Geographic concentration: Sadr City and other Mahdi Army-controlled neighborhoods of Baghdad. Also Basra, Najaf, Karbala.
- Time period: Most concentrated 2006–2009. The peak was 2009, with HRW estimating 100+ killings in that year alone.
State response (or lack of one)
The Iraqi state at the time was both unable and unwilling to investigate. Police reports of LGBTQ+ killings often went unprocessed. Some police officers themselves were members of the responsible militias. The Ministry of Interior denied a systematic problem when challenged by international media.
Why this still matters
Many of the structural conditions that produced the 2003–2009 wave continue to exist or have re-emerged:
- Militia influence over state security forces. Many of the same factions that conducted the killings have since been formalized into the Popular Mobilization Forces (الحشد الشعبي) and have official state-tolerated standing.
- Cultural framing of LGBTQ+ identity as foreign and morally polluting has, if anything, intensified — see the media commission terminology order and Law 14.
- Online identification methods have evolved but the underlying pattern of identification → entrapment → physical violence is the same. See the dating app entrapment alert.
The 2012 “emo killings” — when young men perceived as queer or non-conforming were attacked and in some cases killed in Sadr City and other Baghdad neighborhoods — are usually classified as a continuation of the same pattern, with media-driven moral panic about “emo” culture providing cover.
What to do with this information
- Don’t dismiss historical risk as past. The actors are still active. The conditions that enabled them are still in place.
- Take entrapment seriously — see the dating app entrapment alert for current methods.
- Read the original HRW report if you have the means and capacity. It is hard reading. It is also a careful, sourced, factual document that helps you understand what kinds of attacks have actually occurred.
- Plan for safety as if these patterns may recur. Our honor violence guide covers practical safety planning.
The 2009 report is available in full from Human Rights Watch.