With many unable to afford even basic food, some say they’d allow prospective grooms to take very young girls — though others are fighting to keep their kids.
But Gul, unusually in this deeply patriarchal, male-dominated society, is resisting. Married off herself at 15, she says she would kill herself if her daughter, Qandi Gul, is forcibly taken away.
It’s money she doesn’t have. Her husband fled, possibly fearing Gul might denounce him to the authorities. The Taliban government recently announced a ban on forcing women into marriage or using women and girls as exchange tokens to settle disputes. In another part of the same camp, father-of-four Hamid Abdullah was also selling his young daughters into arranged marriages, desperate for money to treat his chronically ill wife, pregnant with their fifth child.
But he needs money now for food and treatments, so he is trying to arrange a marriage for Nazia for about 20,000-30,000 afghani . His mother, Guldasta, said that after days with nothing to eat, she told her husband to take the boy to the bazaar and sell him to bring food for the others. Buying of boys is believed to be less common than girls, and when it does take place, it appears to be cases of infant boys bought by families who don’t have any sons. In her despair, Guldasta thought perhaps such a family would want an 8-year-old.
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