AFGHANI FATHER GIVES DAUGHTER, 6, AWAY TO REPAY DEBT. AND SHE WILL BECOME A CHILD BRIDE.

 

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Child brides are nothing new in remote villages of Afghanistan, although the laws forbid the practice. 

What is novel is the reason why young girls, as young as 6, as is in the case detailed below, are given away, with both the consent of the father and the local elders.

In Kabul, a large refugee camp extends as far as the eye can see.  A family here has incurred a discreet amount of debt.  

In order to repay its debt, and in the absence of funds, the father has consented to his debt being erased by giving his 6 year old daughter away.  He did so after the elders decided it was his only option.  

She will be married to a 17 year old who happens to be the son of the man the father owes his debt to.  This resolution of the debt, which amounts to about 2,500 dollars and which was incurred when the mother of the child fell ill and needed care, basically has put a price on the head of the small child.    

The family has no choice.  After the mother fell ill, one of the nine children died of cold in the winter.  

The family also had no choice because the father of the child was obligated to repay his debt.  

The father of the little girl is a refugee from Helmand province, once a place of bitter fighting between US forces and the local Taliban.  His story however, is not unusual.  More and more often child brides are given away by their family because of duress.  

The war in Afghanistan has caused this misery, because in the refugee camps and with no work, the refugees are at the mercy of the elders and the community.  

And the Afghanistan government does not enforce the laws it has against child brides or the abuse of women in camps or other places.  

With the withdrawal of troops and support, Afghanistan is now increasingly in the hands of a government that is incapable of bringing order and protection to its people.  In the camps, things are even worse.  The government is hoping that the harsh conditions will force the refugees to return to their villages, so it fails to intervene in cases of abuse.  

But this trend is eroding the societal bonds and networks that existed before the war.

The father of the child insists that if he were still in his home province of Helmand, such a request would have never been made of him.  Indeed the girl's grandmother insists that she has no memory of a child being given away to repay a loan.  

The elders in the Jirga that was formed to hear the debt case insist, on their part, that what they have decided suited the occasion perfectly.  It was in their view " the only resolution".

Although there has been an outcry and some action from local women's rights groups nothing was achieved to rescind the order of the jirga.  

What is also unsaid in this matter, is that the harsh conditions of the camps will probably force the refugees to try and return to their native villages and start working in the opium trade, as their only alternative.  The camps do not offer work, and often the men in the camps cannot even find daily work to feed their families.  

To make matters worse, an education program run in the camps, which among other things fed the girls of the camp at least once a day, has now been ended by the European Union, citing budget constraint amid its banking crisis.  

What life in the camps has become, and the case of this little girl exemplifies it, is that there is a distortion of Afghani values in the camps.  The groom of the girl or woman usually pays a sum to the bride's family.  It is common in Pashtun communities.  

In this case, instead of paying the family for the little girl, the groom's family will erase the debt that her father owes by taking the child as their property.  And because the marriage was not arranged in the usual manner, i.e., chosen by the groom, the little girl will be treated more as a servant than a bride, like little more than a slave.  She might also become a lure for a chosen second wife, since the first will virtually become the household help. 

After the fall of the Taliban, swapping child brides for debts by opium traders has become common.  Gone then, are whatever measures of respect and status the woman child could have enjoyed before the societal corrosion engendered by the war.  

The father of the girl is also worried that his daughter might die due to the harsh conditions she faces.  In that case, the father will have to honor tradition by killing someone to avenge her.