Afghanistan - selling children - guess which ones?

[ArabellaScott]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0q25dwj807o

Nobody would deny poverty is a huge problem in Afghanistan:

'The US – once the top donor to Afghanistan – cut nearly all aid to the country last year. Many other key donors have also significantly reduced contributions, including the UK. Current UN figures show that the aid received so far this year is 70% lower than in 2025.
Severe drought – which has affected more than half the provinces in the country - is compounding problems.'

The BBC presents this as 'an impossible choice' made by 'Afghan fathers'.

Why is it just the fathers making this choice, BBC?

Why is it just daughters sold, BBC?

A remarkably similar article from 2021:

https://www.npr.org/2021/12/31/1069428211/parents-selling-children-shows-desperation-in-afghanistan

'The aid-dependent country's economy was already teetering when the Taliban seized power in mid-August amid a chaotic withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops. The international community froze Afghanistan's assets abroad and halted all funding, unwilling to work with a Taliban government given its reputation for brutality during its previous rule 20 years ago.
The consequences have been devastating for a country battered by four decades of war, a punishing drought and the coronavirus pandemic. Legions of state employees, including doctors, haven't been paid in months. Malnutrition and poverty stalk the most vulnerable, and aid groups say more than half the population faces acute food shortages.'

A bit more explication from the 2021 NPR report:

'Arranging marriages for very young girls is a frequent practice throughout the region. The groom's family - often distant relatives - pays money to seal the deal, and the child usually stays with her own parents until she is at least around 15 or 16. Yet with many unable to afford even basic food, some say they'd allow prospective grooms to take very young girls or are even trying to sell their sons.
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.
Gul remembers well the moment she found out her husband had sold Qandi. For around two months, the family had been able to eat. Eventually, she asked her husband where the money came from, and he told her.
"My heart stopped beating. I wished I could have died at that time, but maybe God didn't want me to die," Gul said. Qandi sat close to her mother, her hazel eyes peering shyly from beneath her sky-blue headscarf. "Each time I remember that night...I die and come back to life. It was so difficult."
She asked her husband why he did it.
"He said he wanted to sell one and save the others. 'You all would have died this way,' (he said.) I told him, 'Dying was much better than what you have done.'"
Gul rallied her community, telling her brother and village elders that her husband had sold her child behind her back. They supported her, and with their help she secured a "divorce" for her child, but only on condition she repays the 100,000 afghanis (about $1,000) that her husband received.'

Contraception? though maybe not allowed

I found the report so distressing and I felt that more should have been said about the “market” for young girls.

The girls in last night’s report were to leave their family when they turned 10.

Also 2021, from Unicef:

https://www.unicef.org/rosa/press-releases/girls-increasingly-risk-child-marriage-afghanistan

'“We have received credible reports of families offering daughters as young as 20 days old up for future marriage in return for a dowry.
“Even before the latest political instability, UNICEF’s partners registered 183 child marriages and 10 cases of selling of children over 2018 and 2019 in Herat and Baghdis provinces alone. The children were between 6 months and 17 years of age.
“UNICEF estimates that 28 per cent of Afghan women aged 15–49 years were married before the age of 18.'

Totally shocking yet totally unsurprising. I just despair of men.

2022

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/8/14/ill-be-sacrificed-the-lost-and-sold-daughters-of-afghanistan

'Across Afghanistan, it is common for children – particularly girls – to be married. Families arrange marriages to pay back personal debts, settle disputes, improve relations with rival families, or simply because they hope marriage will offer them protection from the worst extremes of economic hardship, and social and political upheaval.'
...
'Sadiq Akif, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, was quoted earlier this year saying, “when a girl reaches puberty, she can be given to marriage”. Puberty in girls generally occurs between the ages of eight and 13.
While most countries consider 18 to be the age of maturity, many countries allow under-18s to marry in some or all circumstances.
Child marriage has always existed in Afghanistan. But, recent reports suggest an increase in child selling and marriages spurred by a deepening humanitarian crisis following the Taliban takeover. The country’s aid-dependent economy was already on edge when the Taliban seized power last August. Then the international community froze about $9bn in Afghan assets overseas and halted all funding, reluctant to work with the Taliban government. The consequences have been devastating for a country already battered by decades of war and poverty.'

The BBC report showed some premie newborns in hospital and part of the commentary over it was that the mothers weren’t getting enough food and water for the babies to thrive.

The adults are starving and thirsty (as are their existing children) and yet the men continue to have sex with their wives, knowing that further conceptions are likely. They put their existing family’s lives at risk (stretching already scarce resources for a start) because they can’t, or won’t, give up their ‘god-given’ right to sex.

Yes, it's interesting to think that the vast majority of the time, the BBC is totally capable of using words that mean something, and presumably everyone reading this story, knows the sex of these fathers and their daughters.
Taking all moral, poverty-related quandaries out of this and stating bare facts: males selling females.
Behind all the fake-'progressive' stuff, everyone knows what a male is and what a female is.

I’ve just read A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby published 1958 and women then were commodities to be sold

The BBC post on X has now been community noted.

https://x.com/BBCWorld/status/2056483177653313557

'BBC frames Afghan fathers selling daughters as sympathetic. All profiled cases involve girls (e.g. 5-year-old). Selling daughters for marriage is a longstanding cultural practice in parts of Afghanistan. BBC focuses on fathers' distress over outcomes for the girls (rape).'

https://spectator.com/article/why-does-the-bbc-think-afghan-men-are-selling-their-daughters/

' ‘Underage [marriages] have their problems’, the Beeb quotes one of the dads as saying. Call off the hunt for the grossest understatement of the year. It is the stuff of moral oblivion to refer to girls being sold for cash as a ‘problem’'

O'Neill suggests 'cultural relativism' and fear of criticising Afghanistan's culture of selling girls is the reason the BBC report was slanted as it was.

I thought the report's aim was more an attempt to criticise Trump for cutting aid, tbh. The casual misogyny just wasn't noticed. Not that this invisible prejudice is better.

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.

'Update: This article has been amended to explain why daughters are more often sold than sons in Afghanistan. Additional context has been added to make clear that Saeed's daughter Shaiqa was sold to his relative for marriage, and to include an additional quote from Saeed in which he describes how he came to his decision.'

This is the update, as far as I can see:

'The choice to sell daughters over sons, is because culturally sons are widely seen as future breadwinners, and here in Afghanistan, with the Taliban's restrictions on education and work for women and girls, it is even more pronounced.
Additionally, there is a tradition in which a marital gift is given to the family of the girl from the family of the boy during marriage.'

That's arguable, BBC.

New archive: https://archive.ph/wip/5FpR7

I think also this para was added:

'"If I had taken the whole sum at that time, he would have taken her away. So I told him just give me enough for her treatment now, and in the next five years you can give me the rest after which you can take her. She will become his daughter-in-law," explains Saeed.'

Earliest archive:

https://archive.ph/YZXBp#selection-1111.66-1115.96

Today's:

https://archive.ph/uuhbb

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.