topic for discussion: "Starving Afghans sell girls of eight as brides"

[nashville_brook]

this is a story from LBN that caught my eye. "Starving Afghans sell girls of eight as brides." is anyone else bothered by the headline... does "starving" mitigate selling daughters?

the article states that the selling of daughters is a cultural reality -- what made this story "newsworthy" was that Afghans are having to sell daughter EARLIER.

i'm thinking this story needs a reality check -- it's not the "starving" that caused the sale of young girls into slavery -- that already existed!



Starving Afghans sell girls of eight as brides

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1984396,00.html

Villagers whose crops have failed after a second devastating drought are giving their young daughters in marriage to raise money for food

Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor
Sunday January 7, 2007
The Observer

Azizgul is 10 years old, from the village of Houscha in western Afghanistan. This year the wheat crop failed again following a devastating drought. Her family was hungry. So, a little before Christmas, Azizgul's mother 'sold' her to be married to a 13-year-old boy.'I need to sell my daughters because of the drought,' said her mother Sahatgul, 30. 'We don't have enough food and the bride price will enable us to buy food. Three months ago my 15-year-old daughter married.

'We were not so desperate before. Now I have to marry them younger. And all five of them will have to get married if the drought becomes worse. The bride price is 200,000 afghanis <£2,000>. His father came to our house to arrange it. The boy pays in instalments. First he paid us 5,000 afghanis, which I used to buy food.'
(snip)

While prohibited by both Afghan civil and Islamic law, arranged marriages have long been a feature of Afghan life, particularly in rural areas. What is unusual is the age of some of the girls. And the reason: to buy food to survive.

__________________________

see, i'm not seeing how these last few sentences make any sense -- if they were already selling their girls into sexual slavery, then you can't blame the drought -- what's a few years off a girl's life when Daddy's hungry?

[Rosemary2205]

1. I also thought this was the cultural norm.

telling a reporter that hunger is the sole reason sounds bogus to me too.

[maxsolomon]

2. the US should buy the girls & set them free

2000 british pounds = 4K/girl

1 billion frees 250,000 women & feeds that many afgani families.

sounds like a better use of my tax dollars than driving humvees around waiting to get blown up.

[scrinmaster]

5. Set them free where?

Just let them roam Afghanistan?

It says in the article that it's illegal there, how about arresting and punishing the ones selling their children, instead of rewarding them for it.

[Book Lover]

3. How is this different, really, from

any *other* kind of dowry payment? And as you say - this is a cultural reality anyway - if the international aid community delivered food aid to these places, this practice would not stop, but instead just delay the inevitable.

[nashville_brook]

4. yeah -- this is what stuck in my craw. food aid wouldn't solve this.

thanks for turning this around and making it more clear. that's exactly where my brain got snagged.

why is it that womens' issues are always the ones where people are willing to make a cultural stand -- well, we can't tell a culture what to do! female genital mutilation is a way of life! selling girls into sexual slavery is a cultural norm -- can't tinker there.

yikes.

the article mentions that the organization doing the report is called "Christian Aid." i know nothing about this group. when i was in college i did some work with Oxfam and Bread for the World, but i've never heard of CA -- i wonder if the cultural spin is due to the group's (patriarchal?) ideology.

[mzteris]

6. NPR: Afghan girls suiciding

....... I wonder if they're connected.

I only caught just a little bit of the report so I'm not sure "how" they're connected, but feel they probably are - somehow.