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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums'My familiy is starving, I have to sell my daughter'
Link to tweet
This is where @A_Loyd_Times found a father trying to sell his 4-year-old daughter
The value of the afghani has tumbled since the Taliban seized Kabul, resulting in a pawnbroker offering about £170 for the child.
Her father, a broken police officer trying to ward starvation away from a family of seven, was holding out to pawn his daughter for about £420.
I would prefer to die than be reduced to selling my daughter, Says Mir Nazir. But my own death wouldnt save anyone in my family. Who would feed my other children?
Mir Nazir had lost his job with the police in Ghazni and fled to Kabul with his wife and five children days before the Taliban seized the capital. Now he was a bazaar porter. His rent outstripped his wages. The family were hungry, and there was no relief in sight.
Mir Nazir had a message for us:
Dont think I am any different to you. Dont think I didnt love the baby child I brought into the world and have loved her ever since, dont think I am not distraught at the thought of selling my daughter I just cant see what else I can do.
The Afghan economy, already sick before the victory of the Taliban has been kicked off a ledge.
The World Bank has halted aid to Afghanistan. The IMF has blocked access to $460 million in emergency reserves, and the US has blocked about $7 billion in Afghan bank reserves.
For a country with a cash-based informal economy in which 75% of public spending is dependent on foreign support, the severing of foreign cash lines has been catastrophic. Food prices have risen and hundreds of thousands of security sector and government workers are unemployed.
The former governor of the countrys central bank, Ajmal Ahmady, observed that analysts who suggested China and Pakistan would become Afghanistans financial supporters were unrealistic, as Afghanistan and the central bank were likely to be sanctioned entities.
The countrys physical cash supply is dwindling as the printing firms that produce afghani notes abroad, notably Poland and France, are probably unable to deliver the billions of afghanis agreed in existing contracts.
Not everyone is miserable. Overseeing the destitution of their fellow Afghans, the dealers in the bazaar along the Kabul River admit they have never had it so good, and most talked about a 50% profit rise since August 15.
XanaDUer2
(10,327 posts)LakeArenal
(28,729 posts)XanaDUer2
(10,327 posts)I hate humans
Iggo
(47,489 posts)As in, Thanks for the money. Heres the little girl you just bought. Shes yours now.
To answer you in another way: Possibly. Probably. Eventually.
LakeArenal
(28,729 posts)Again I dont know the answer but when you have people you actually know saying about the same....its heart breaking.
Demsrule86
(68,352 posts)And that my friend is why we could never fix this place and shouldn't have tried.
Haggard Celine
(16,820 posts)It was a fool's errand, but it lined the pockets of influential people.
Demsrule86
(68,352 posts)UpInArms
(51,253 posts)Demsrule86
(68,352 posts)Demsrule86
(68,352 posts)gohuskies
(1,153 posts)Everything they touch does in fact die. This is utterly heartbreaking to see the disintegration of Afghani society. By ceding control to the Taliban rather than supporting the Afghan government, Pompeo, Trump and Stephen Miller bear the brunt of blame for laying waste to this country.
Steelrolled
(2,022 posts)Along the way, Bush and Obama just delayed it. It is for the best that it is finally done.
Afghanistan is returning to its roots. Their society is foreign to us, and vice-versa.
Fix The Stupid
(947 posts)Let's have 7 kids I cannot even feed now...
How utterly selfish.
eissa
(4,238 posts)Both my husband's grandparents and mine are survivors of the genocide of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks by the Turks after WWI. They fled on foot from the Hakkari and Mardin regions of Turkey into Syria, Iraq and Iran. Many perished during the exodus from starvation and disease. At no point did it occur to them to sell their daughters.
wackadoo wabbit
(1,160 posts)According to the article, I would prefer to die than be reduced to selling my daughter, Says [sic] Mir Nazir. But my own death wouldnt save anyone in my family. Who would feed my other children?
But if he sells himself into slavery, while he might not get as much for himself as he would for a young female sex slave, he would certainly get enough to feed his family for a time.
I guess he'd rather die than be a slave. Too bad he isn't willing to give his daughter any kind of choice in the matter.
musette_sf
(10,184 posts)Dont think I didnt love the baby child I brought into the world
ecstatic
(32,567 posts)If my children were starving, I would think of another way to get food on the table other than selling a helpless child. The thought wouldn't even occur to me because I'm not a misogynistic, selfish asshole.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)Raine
(30,540 posts)JI7
(89,182 posts)Klaralven
(7,510 posts)That's the root of the problem.
Few have the means to properly support a family of seven, even in a prosperous country in normal times, much less in a poor country in a time of war.
JI7
(89,182 posts)The thing that leads to less kids has always been rising standard of living and women's rights.
Klaralven
(7,510 posts)The Chinese have demonstrated that, and it is a much quicker way to reduce poverty.