Afghanistan - selling children - guess which ones?

What is the family going to do when the money obtained from selling their daughters runs out?
Or is daughter sale an infinite money well?
Oh I know, wait for the underage daughter to give birth to a daughter then sell that one.

I mean what is the point of your question? Sell the daughter because selling the father is not long term effective?

Oh ffs.

I mean in what scenario is selling anyone because you are starving: "alright Jack, I get you".

And since women can't work or even leave the house, what do you propose the family does when that money runs out?

The fathers should have sold themselves and left the money with mum to feed the young ones.
The money would go further as kids under 10 eat less than grown ups.

Yeah as long as a man is sad, the BBC will justify his actions.

I saw one of those "boys get sad too" t-shirts yesterday. I felt like shouting "yes I know! Women bear the brunt of it whenever this happens. The ones who don't notice or excuse it or explain it away are his male peers."

In the past. Yes. Then most cultures went through reformations and enlightenments and secular education and slowly, very slowly things improved as knowledge improved. While a poor Afghan villager may not have access to the age of information to learn and grow, the Taliban in power certainly do. They choose not to do better because they like buying and raping little girls in their extended families. So like I say, an inferior culture because the men won’t change, not because they don’t know how to do better but because they like what they are doing.

My god, all western nations should accept tens of thousands of Afghan women, girls and young boys as refugees. The only proviso being is that the refugees are not allowed to sponsor their menfolk to join them for a decade. I’m thinking a large number would never bother bringing out these backward cavemen.

People in our culture did similar things in the past. Parents sold their children into servitude, gave them away to other people because they couldn't afford them and let them work and die in factories. Poverty, potential starvation and lack of contraception creates terrible situations in any society. That isn't to say I don't judge and loathe the Taliban, but I do think that there is potential in all societies for undemocratic, misogynistic male governments to take control given the right circumstances.

I’m thinking of all the dads I know and trying to imagine which ones would sell off their daughters to be raped by old men. The brilliant dads, the good enough dads, the emotionally distant dads, the feckless dads, the immigrant dads, the crusty conservative dads, the woke progressive dads, the useless dads, the religious dads, the atheist dads. I think all of them to a man would rather starve than do this to their daughters.

Some cultures are very inferior to other cultures. This article pretends this is a recent thing due to economic hardship but that’s not true. This is what happens when a society puts no value on women and girls. It’s normal and vast numbers of Afghan men wouldn’t see an issue with it.

We can do things like stop playing Afghan men’s teams in sporting tournaments. I seriously can’t believe we still are.

Today, BBC News framed the MAFS rape scandal as 'an accident waiting to happen'

So, rape is an accident and the sale of girls is a father's tragedy. Ffs

Poverty is only half the story.
You have two children:
A is allowed an education and allowed a job, so A can bring money into a poor family by working.
B is allowed neither, so the only way B can bring money into the family is by being sold or hired out for sex.
The fact that this is happening to girls is squarely on the Taliban and their policies, and the cultural moral relativists can do one.

Janet Murray in Spiked has written her take on the BBC article

https://archive.ph/s8yB7

https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/05/20/why-did-the-bbc-downplay-the-horror-of-afghan-men-selling-their-daughters/

And, just having a quick scroll before bed, I saw a headline that the Taliban have legalised the marriage of 9 year old girls. I think it was in the Times. I didn't have the stomach to read it.

Well, yes, poverty isn't fun and games.

My grandfather was 2 decades her senior and wives in separate countries (obv not UK). As I said, she said she was lucky to go from complete poverty to a comfortable lifestyle. Of course that very much depended on my grandfather making it so.

No change then. Sold like a goat, but for different purposes. It’s a man’s world all right.

Women can't even leave the house without a male guardian so the idea that an unaccompanied woman or girl is going to be able to get over the border and survive the journey to the UK is ludicrous. The only way these women are getting out is if there is a man already here to bring them.

I think there are things we can do, but yes it's limited.

We can refuse male Afghan asylum seekers and create routes to asylum for women and girls as a priority. The men in Afghanistan can receive aid there, the women can't.

My understanding is that when the Taliban returned in 2021, the population offered up no resistance and effectively welcomed them back.

It's hard to feel sympathy for the men getting what they wanted. I only feel sorry for the little girls, but there's absolutely nothing that we in the West can do if the Afghanis choose the Taliban.

Thank goodness for community notes.

This sort of article with its awful pro-paedophile anti-female bias and sympathy for men seeing their daughters as chattel is a warning to women in this country. We need to fight for our rights or we may lose them.

When Afghanistan fell under Taliban control, I remember articles by female Afghani journalists describing the horror that their male colleagues just let it happen. In one case a woman describes a male colleague - previously not thought to be a misogynist arsewipe - who laughed at her and told her she'd 'have to marry men like me now' (or something along those lines). Those women have now been silenced. They can no longer work in those jobs.

I've put this on the other thread but female employees of aid agencies have been banned. Not mentioned by the BBC here. Taliban edict on female aid staff pushes Afghan women dee...

From the article:
"On Friday morning, the UN, having failed to persuade the Taliban to lift the ban on female members of staff, despite extensive negotiations and under pressure from the NGOs, announced that it is rescinding its suspension and resuming “life-saving” services in Islam Qala.
In practice, that means a hugely reduced service. More than 100 female staff were working at Islam Qala before the new rule was applied. Now, only three Afghan women – a doctor, a nurse and a midwife – are allowed to work there. Other non-medical services, including nutrition, can no longer be provided for women at the facility.
A humanitarian official at the Islam Qala border warned that accepting the Taliban’s rules in Herat will prompt the group to enforce them across Afghanistan. “This will cause a lot of harm to the humanitarian work at the border. Even if we have 50,000 women coming through, we only have three women to serve them,” the official said.
“[Accepting the Taliban’s conditions] is very dangerous because potentially it sets a precedent. The other risk is that we have excluded 50% of the population from receiving services, and that breaks the humanitarian principles that we serve everyone and are impartial. If we do this then we are not impartial and we are not independent.”

All this not mentioned in the BBC article.

I also wonder if the fathers selling these daughters sell their own kidneys before or after they sell their daughters to be raped. Yes, awful decisions but the fact it even crosses their minds to sell their daughters into slavery should be called out and is not in the BBC article.

Thank you @ArabellaScott for all the links. It is extremely distressing.

This society has gone so extreme in its treatment of women that it is as though it wants to kill itself off.

The men must be getting worse and worse to have leaders promoting the attitudes and suffocating alternatives.

whether it's better for the girl to be married off, or starve to death

Whether it’s better for a little girl to be raped aged 10, but believe it is marriage and hope for Stockholm syndrome to set in, or starve to death.

What age was your poor grandmother’s husband? What did she say about her experience?

I think you also need to consider whether it's better for the girl to be married off, or starve to death. Either way, she's the last in the pecking order. My own grandmother was married off (as a teen though). She said she was the lucky one in the end because her siblings died of poverty.

I’ve read about the organ selling as well. There is a community there who sell their kidneys and I wonder if they encourage their children to sell them as they get young teens.

The first time I saw this selling children was about 15 years ago and it was a family selling their son to a richer woman who didn’t have a son. I said to my husband if I was the dad I would sell myself first for food, he said who would buy him.

Anyway this was years ago, I am in agreement why have more children or any children if you ‘have’ to sell them time and time again. I have started to think that it’s almost become culturally acceptable to do so. As it’s the same with the black market organs. I don’t see this in other Muslim countries.