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Grendel
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Afghan poor sell daughters as brides
Years of war, drought force some to give up young girls
MSNBC, February 23, 2003
By Marc Kaufman
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Feb. 23 - The young sisters are perky and eager to play. Zarlaska is 10 and listens intently to all that her parents are saying. Nabas Gul, 9, is more shy and hides behind her head scarf.
The two live with, and often care for, five younger siblings in a large room in an otherwise ruined building, along what was once the front line of a forgotten Afghan battle. The room is dark and bare for such a large family, but there are some quilts, a cradle and a fire that make it feel a little like home.
But it won't be the girls' home for long. When the two were just toddlers, their father needed money to pay off his debts and, seeing no other source of funds, he sold his daughters to wealthy opium poppy growers who wanted brides for their sons. Zarlaska and Nabas Gul can stay with their family until their husbands-to-be come to claim them - usually around the time they reach puberty - but their parents would have no right to object if the buyers wanted to take them now.
"I am a poor man, and this is how I can feed my large family," said their father, Sharafudin, himself a small-time poppy farmer who moved his family to Kandahar several years ago to escape other debt collectors. He said he knew it was wrong to sell the girls - that some mullahs in his village had advised against it - but that he didn't regret it. "What else could I do?" he asked with a shrug. Then he added, "Many others are doing the same thing."
RISING PRACTICE
By all accounts, he is correct. There are no statistics collected to measure it, but Afghans involved with women's issues say the selling of young girls is on the rise. After a quarter-century of war, civil chaos and most recently drought, many families have been strained to the breaking point, and the outright selling of daughters for cash is one harsh and heart-rending result.
From a report by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan:
"Despite positive developments regarding women's rights, intimidation and violence by regional and local commanders against women continue unabated.... In many rural areas, especially in the more conservative tribal belt, the situation of women has not changed to any great extent since the removal of the Taliban. The prevalence of conservative attitudes limits the full, equal and effective participation of women in civil, cultural, economic, political and social life throughout the country at all levels of society."
UN News Service, March 6, 2003
The practice has a cultural basis here in southern Afghanistan, where prospective husbands have long paid a "bride price" for their wives - a kind of dowry that is traditionally set by the status of the bride's family and the resources of the groom's. But what was a custom has evolved into a market in which men can buy young girls from poor families. And with the country's legal system a shambles, there is nothing to stop them.
"Unfortunately, we have families now where the girls are sold as young children and the parents don't seem to think of the welfare of the girls at all," said Safia Amajar, director of the Kandahar Women's Association and a longtime educator in the city. "After so many years of war, people are poor and society is broken. "Selling the children as brides is against Islam, and I tell people that. But there are so many other problems we face and that one is very complicated for people right now, so nothing happens to stop it."
Marrying a child and being directly paid for the sale are prohibited in Afghanistan under both the civil code and Islamic law. Marzia Basel, a former Afghan judge and founder of the Afghan Women Judges Association in Kabul, pointed out that "there are laws, and then there is custom and there is great poverty." "The legal system has disappeared almost entirely here, and nobody would ever be charged for selling a daughter or marrying one so young," she said. "Until we have a strong government and people here have certain rights, these are the kind of things that will happen."
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