Re: Child marriage
Drug trade is also worsening the problem of child brides in Afghanistan.
http://www.theatlantic.com/internati...brides/252638/
Quote:
She was a 12-year-old girl, with fiery green eyes and defiance on her face. Her father had promised her hand to a stranger from Helmand province who didn't speak her language, was more than 30 years her senior, and already had eight children. Her father had borrowed the man's money for his poppy venture. And now it was up to her to repay that debt.
Darya, as she was called in a new book by Fariba Nawa, Opium Nation: Child Brides, Drug Lords, and One Woman's Journey Through Afghanistan, represents a growing trend in Afghanistan, a trend in which families marry off their daughters to settle debts originating from the opium trade. "Opium brides," they called them.
|
And Four Corners showed a story on it recently. http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stori...12/3544562.htm
NATO provides support for the Afghans to destroy poppy fields and when the farmers can't pay the debt to the smugglers, which they had borrowed from to pay for seeds and fertilizer, they take the children as sex slaves unless the money is soon paid back. One incredibly brave little girl is interviewed which was on the run after she escaped and still fears being captured again. Just fucking horrible.
__________________
'Those who invalidate reason ought seriously to consider whether they argue against reason with or without reason: if with reason, then they establish the principle that they are labouring to dethrone: but if they argue without reason (which, in order to be consistent with themselves they must do), they are out of reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve rational argument'-Ethan Allen
|