Afghan girls traded to settle debts, feuds

Forced weddings occur despite progress

By ALISA TANG
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

JALALABAD, Afghanistan -- Unable to scrounge together the $165 he needed to repay a loan to buy sheep, Nazir Ahmad made good on his debt by selling his 16-year-old daughter to marry the lender's son.

"He gave me nine sheep," Ahmad said, describing his family's woes since taking the loan. "Because of nine sheep, I gave away my daughter."

Seated beside him in the cramped compound, his daughter Malia's eyes filled with tears. She used a black scarf to wipe them away.

Despite advances in women's rights and at least one tribe's move to outlaw the practice, girls are traded like currency in Afghanistan and forced marriages are common. Antiquated tribal laws authorize the practice, known as "bad" in the Afghan language Dari -- and girls are used to settle disputes ranging from debts to murder.

Such exchanges bypass the hefty bride price of a traditional betrothal, which can cost upward of $1,000. Roughly two of five Afghan marriages are forced, says the country's Ministry of Women's Affairs.

"It's really sad to do this in this day and age, exchange women," said Manizha Naderi, the director of the aid organization Women for Afghan Women. "They're treated as commodities."

Though violence against women remains widespread, Afghanistan has taken significant strides in women's rights since the hard-line Taliban years, when women were virtual prisoners -- banned from work, school or leaving home unaccompanied by a male relative. Millions of girls now attend school and women fill jobs in government and media.

There are also signs of change for the better inside the largest tribe in eastern Afghanistan -- the deeply conservative Shinwaris.

Shinwari elders from several districts signed a resolution this year outlawing several practices that harm girls and women. These included a ban on using girls to settle so-called blood feuds -- when a man commits murder, he must hand over his daughter or sister as a bride for a man in the victim's family. Otherwise, revenge killings often continue between the families for generations.

Jan Shinwari, a businessman and provincial council member, said a BBC radio report by a female journalist from the Shinwari tribe, Malalai Shinwari, had exposed the trade of girls and shamed the elders into passing the resolution to end the practice.

"I did this work not because of human rights, but for Afghan women, for Afghan girls not to be exchanged for stupid things," Jan Shinwari said.

Now a lawmaker in Parliament, Malalai Shinwari called the changes to tribal laws a "big victory for me."

More than 20 Shinwari leaders gathered last week in the eastern city of Jalalabad insisted that women given away for such marriages -- including those to settle blood feuds -- were treated well in their new families.

But Afghan women say this could not be further from the truth.

"By establishing a family relationship, we want to bring peace. But in reality, that is not the case," said Hangama Anwari, an independent human rights commissioner and founder of the Women and Children Legal Research Foundation.

The group investigated about 500 cases of girls given in marriage to settle blood feuds and found only four or five that ended happily. Much more often, the girl suffered for a crime committed by a male relative, she said. A girl is often beaten and sometimes killed because when the family looks at her, they see the killer. "Because they lost someone, they take it out on her," Naderi said.

Malia listened as her father described how he was held hostage by his lender, Khaliq Mohammad, because he could not come up with the money to pay for the sheep, which Ahmad had sold to free a relative seized because of another of Ahmad's debts.

Ahmad was released only when he agreed to give Malia's hand in marriage to the lender's 18-year-old son. Asked how she felt about it, Malia shook her head and remained silent. Her face then crumpled in anguish and she wiped away tears.

Asked if she was happy, she responded halfheartedly, "Well, my mother and father agreed ... ." Her voice trailed off, and she cried again.