Starving Afghans sell girls of eight as brides

[kskiska]

Villagers whose crops have failed after a second devastating drought are giving their young daughters in marriage to raise money for food

Azizgul is 10 years old, from the village of Houscha in western Afghanistan. This year the wheat crop failed again following a devastating drought. Her family was hungry. So, a little before Christmas, Azizgul's mother 'sold' her to be married to a 13-year-old boy.

'I need to sell my daughters because of the drought,' said her mother Sahatgul, 30. 'We don't have enough food and the bride price will enable us to buy food. Three months ago my 15-year-old daughter married.

'We were not so desperate before. Now I have to marry them younger. And all five of them will have to get married if the drought becomes worse. The bride price is 200,000 afghanis <£2,000>. His father came to our house to arrange it. The boy pays in instalments. First he paid us 5,000 afghanis, which I used to buy food.'

(snip)

'Many families are doing this because of the drought,' Sahatgul said. 'Our daughters are our only economic asset. We will have the marriage ceremony at puberty. The groom, Rahim, has gone to Iran with his brothers to earn the money. He is working on a building site. He will come back with the rest of the money that he has earned or borrowed. He calls us every month to make sure that Azizgul is still his.'

more…
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1984396,00.html

[Bobbieo]

1. Maybe Hugh Hefner can send over a couple of plane loads of

Playboy bunnies to distract those horny, weak with no will-power Taliban men away from female chldren

[FedUpWithIt All]

3. Or better...

perhaps the disgustingly wealthy of this country could send a little food and money so people do not have to make the choice of seeing their daughters either staved or married.

At least one of the cases in the article states that the "bride" was to be married off to a 13 yr old boy. This boy is working on a construction site away from his family. He is ALSO a child.

I hate the idea of children being "sold" but i also hate the idea of people starving. Easy to sit in the comfort of my safe and well stocked home and criticize people in circumstances i will probably never experience myself.

I am not directing this toward you specifically, but i sure do see an awful lot of this type of blanket comment on here and occasionally it grates.

[superconnected]

5. it makes it worse that girls can be *bought* by even male-children

I doubt all are being sold to male children. But just the same, it's not okay to know that even a 13yo male can buy a girl.

If they're starving why not sell their sons into slave labor instead of their daughter? Or send themselves to Iran to work. Why should the little girl be the sacrifice to feed the whole family? I'm sitting in my chair, warm and fed, not buying your logic that it might be the best thing to do and we haven't walked in their shoes.

Selling the girls reeks of rape.

[FedUpWithIt All]

7. I never said it was acceptable....

i said that snarky, sarcastic comments are easy to make when you are not walking in someone else's shoes.

Edited to add...I pointed out the age of the boy because of the following statement made in the post i was responding to..."horny, weak with no will-power Taliban men away from female chldren"


Certainly not an accurate description of a boy no more than 3 years older than the girl. If anything they are BOTH products of their culture and some might even say victims.

[nodehopper]

9. I am not sure a 13 y/o boy buys the child?

this particular arrangement sounds like traditional arranged marriage, where children are "betrothed" in childhood or pre-adolescence and actually married later, but the financial arrangements between families--the bride price, the dowry--take place earlier. In China there was a practice of marriages being arranged virtually at birth, and then the girl would be sent to grow up with the family of the boy, so she could help out with chores, as part of the QPQ for the bride price...except the problem with that arrangement was, frequently the children grew up as siblings and never consummated their marriage or produced offspring, because it felt incestusous (I read about this type of arrangement while studying about cross-cultural incest taboos in an anthropology class some years ago).

Anyway, this particlar arrangement, while as problematic as ANY arranged marriage, this doesn't seem quite as bad as geriatric Taliban leaders taking pre-adolescent girls as child brides.

[nashville_brook]

18. i agree -- the article states that they are having to sell the girls "younger"

which suggests to me that the problem of "selling daughters" existed before the food shortage.

it's tragic that there's a drought and people are starving -- but to ME (and people are free to disagree) the selling of daughters is wrong at any age and under any circumstances and "prime directive" be damned -- this is bullshit.

[gratuitous]

2. Wow, Laura Bush must be soooo proud

Amazing how the status of women and girls in Afghan society has soared! I mean, an eight-year-old providing income for her entire family. Another success story for her fabulous husband.

[Bobbieo]

4. Fed Up With it All - Of course you are criticizing me.

You have no idea of who I am and where I am coming from. These stupid Taliban men will end up destroying their womenfolk and pretty soon - no more Taliban. This is just another cycle of human tragedy that could have been avoided if Papa Bush, Reagan, and the CIA had not trained these men during the Russo-Afghan War.

[FedUpWithIt All]

8. Again, I commented in response

to YOUR post above because it highlighted the complaint i have.

It is interesting that you would point out that i do not know anything about you when that is in fact my VERY argument. It is a fair bet that you do not personally know the individuals of whom you spoke either.

I have three daughters, two near the ages mentioned in the article. I am in NO WAY supporting the selling of little girls. But i also know from first hand experience what it is like to be VERY hungry and hopeless and my situation does not even compare to what these people are going through.

I say instead of sending playboy bunnies....let's send AID.

[superconnected]

6. Since the US controls afghanistan, how come we are doing smth about this

helping them with food etc. Making sure their civil laws against this are enforced?

Guess haliburton and bechtel aren't there doing the contracting work.

[Bobbieo]

10. I'm not so certain the US controls the country anymore.

We did until Bush got into Iraq . Now, I think a great deal of Afghanistan is again controlled by the warlords. Also a great deal of those crops that have been destroyed were opium poppies cultivated for al Qaida.

[w4rma]

11. The Republican leadership doesn't see a problem with this. It is what they want for America.

They want women to be treated as worthless than men.

[pop goes the weasel]

12. another consequence of global warming?

I can't blame these poor people. By selling their daughters into marriage, they are also saving their daughters' lives, as well as the lives of the rest of the family. I hope the situation doesn't disintegrate further to the point that daughters get sold to unknown buyers outside of the community, but if the drought continues, and war continues to cut off these villages from aid, even that seems likely. As droughts spread, what other sad and terrible measures will families take?

[donsu]

13. global warming will cause things to get worse and worse, there is no

'things getting better' anymore.

prepare yourselves. if they weather doesn't get you, toxins, hormones and murderers will.

and females always get sacrificed first.

[saigon68]

14. "FREEDOM IS ON THE MARCH" shouted the AWOL CHIMPANZEE

[saigon68]

15. FREEDOM TO CONTRACT ----that is

[AnneD]

16. First a full stomach....

then comes morals.

[nashville_brook]

17. is anyone else bothered by the headline... does "starving" mitigate selling children?

i know starving people will do anything, but what sort of culture addresses the problem by selling your daughters into sexual slavery?

sounds like the taliban is back with a vengeance, and this writer (or his editor) is going a bit too far in avoiding "cultural criticism." did starving ethiopians sell their daughters into sexual slavery? does starving make it better? in a land of "subsistance" farming, is daughter selling just another way of life? are we to shrug our shoulders and say "what a pity, they need food"?

i'm thinking this story needs a reality check -- you don't OWN people. period. "many FAMILIES are doing this because of the drought?" i don't f'n think so -- they're doing it b/c the culture of the taliban has so degraded the status of women that A) "families" think SELLING their daughters is an A-okay means to put food on the table and B) there a MARKET for young girls.

obviously the drought isn't effecting EVERYONE or else no one would be able to support another mouth to feed. sheesh.

[maxsolomon]

19. 1 billion in US tax dollars

would "buy" 250,000 afgani girls & feed all their families.

but we'd prefer it went to blackwater mercs driving around in armored ford excurions.

[Jack Rabbit]

20. Has Neil Bush put in a bid for one?

[GoddessOfGuinness]

21. They have the marriage ceremony at puberty...

What if the girls don't live that long?

What an awful situation to be in. Why aren't we helping these people?

[Megahurtz]

22. Oh how "Liberating" for them.

:sarcasm: