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?

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.

Did you not see.the planes taking off with people hanging from the wings?!

Brave, brave women have been resisting. Even knowing they will be beaten and suffer for it. No, the Taliban are far from universal support.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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."

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

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5532597-taliban-legalise-marriage-for-nine-year-old-girls?reply=152439253

Taliban have just legalised marriage (and child rape) for girls as young as nine.

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".

You asked why fathers don't sell themselves.

Because if they do, the entire family starves to death sharpish. In fact, as soon as the food already in the house runs out and the mother isn't able to go out to get more.

Whereas when they sell a daughter, life goes on exactly as it did before.

And they are all having way more children than they can afford because they have no access to contraception.

Use some common sense.

People in poverty with terrible health outcomes tend to have more children.

Assuming these children, often sold to much older men, survive early and constant childbirth, how will they survive when her abuser pops his clogs? Is all they have to hope for that they predecease him? That they'll have a son who'll be old enough, able (is cousin marriage also a thing there?) and willing to take up the reins, possibly sell a sister or two. Live long enough to see the next generation enslaved? How will her sons get together the capital to buy their own brides?

Sadly this isn't a new problem nor is it unique to Afghanistan.

It's so weird isn't it, on the one hand we're supposed to be evil bigots if we don't think our country, where many normal people currently can't afford to eat and need to use foodbanks, should give loads of cash in 'reparations' for slavery hundreds of years ago.

And yet THIS happening right now is 'oh the poor fathers selling their children into slavery' and fuck all effort to do anything to stop it.

Exactly that. Widows face a bleak future. Apparently, the most usual outcome is that they are married off again to another brother from the same family. Custody of the children is automatically granted to the family of the deceased husband, so marrying into the family a second time is the only way she'll be able to keep her children.

Some cultures deserve to be eradicated. This one is right up there with ebola.

That cultural practice yes. But are you saying the whole country should be eradicated?

I'd say fairly obviously not. Someone who's aghast at little children being sold as sex slaves probably isn't pro-completely destroy the country (and therefore all the children in it)?

What we need is to get rid of the Taliban culture where women don't have any human rights, or healthcare, or access to higher education, or jobs etc. Young, fit, single Afghan men are coming to our country in large numbers too so they're obviously not really a fan of the regime either.

Don't be ridiculous.

Isn't this what the ACRS does?

Thank you for answering @user6791
From what you say it seems you do not have a sense your grandmother suffered especially badly. As you say it would have depended on how your grandfather treated her.

In the U.K., in modern times, we would say a fifteen year old girl was raped by a 35 year old man who already had other wives. But she accepted her lot, was glad she had not starved to death like others in her family, (found her husband kind?)and loved her children who came from it all.

It is like a girl being a dog or a cow with rape (because of there being no choice or understanding on the child’s part), sex and conception thrown in.