Posted on 01/07/2007 3:38:43 PM PST by blam
Starving Afghans sell girls of eight as brides
Villagers whose crops have failed after a second devastating drought are giving their young daughters in marriage to raise money for food
Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor
Sunday January 7, 2007
The Observer (UK)
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.' Azizgul is not unique. Hers is one of a number of interviews and case studies collected by the charity Christian Aid - all of them young girls sold by their families to cope with the second ruinous drought to hit Afghanistan within three years.
While the world has focused on the war against the Taliban, the suffering of the drought-stricken villagers, almost 2.5 million of them, has largely gone unnoticed. And where once droughts would afflict Afganistan once every couple of decades, this drought has come hard on the heels of the last one, from which the villagers were barely able to recover.
While prohibited by both Afghan civil and Islamic law,
(Excerpt) Read more at observer.guardian.co.uk ...
Where is the suppsoed 'human rights watch' groups with their condemnations of 'crimes against humanity' and demands for arrests and capture of these criminals who do theis? Nowhere-!! oh, they may give an 'official statement' with no teeth to it- someday- but nothign will be done about it. http://sacredscoop.com
A Mohammed marrying an 8-year-old? No, they've never done that.
"Najibullah, 39, is a farmer. He sold his eight-year-old daughter Somaya for $3,000 (£1,560). She is engaged to a 22-year-old man from the village, Mohammed, who has also gone to Iran to earn the money to pay the bride price."
An 8 year old little girl to a 22 year old man!
Words fail me on the sickness of this.
words fail.
This is not unusual.....
It is done in India, Thailand, Cambodia, China, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan and other wonderful countries in the East, Middle East and Africa.
Probably happens here too - and Europe, in families of immigrants from those countries.
Females have been considered "commodities" since - well, since there have been females.
A forced marriage with an exchange of property or cash is a sale by any other name.
why don't you just spam your website in your tagline instead of trying to pretend the link is relevant to the subject of the thread or whatever comment you type into the message?
pretty distressing isn't it
I'm sruprised the Guardian didn't imply that this was doubly America's fault, for the war and for Global Warming which of course caused the drought.
dammit!
Eight sounds awfully old for a muslim bride.
And yet the opium crop is bumper I hear.
Happened yesterday also.
Once is a mistake.
Sharbat Gula 1984 (left) And In 2002 (right)
At the official exchange rate today - the 5000 Afghani down payment is roughly $100.54.
In Islamic culture - this is a sufficient sum to turn your 10 year old daughter over to another family as "wife" ---- can you say sex slave?
In my opinion, a family that would sell their children to put food in their own mouthes -- isn't worth feeding.
Semper Fi
An 8 year old little girl to a 22 year old man!
Words fail me on the sickness of this.
Not to worry,...He will wait untill She is 9
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