Sharifa looks at her mother with a serious expression. She is ten years old, she has never set foot in school. Her red shawl makes her dark complexion and round eyes stand out. Pretty eyes with a sad, empty look. “Mom, why did you do this to me?” , is the only sentence that comes out of her mouth. Her mother, Rukia, cries inconsolably with a baby in her arms. Sharifa is the oldest of six children and she has just been sold to a relative for 150,000 Afghanis, about 1,500 euros in exchange. Her money has already been spent because they needed it to pay for the medical treatment of her father, a truck driver who had an accident and is struggling between life and death in a hospital in Pakistan. Now the buyer claims her little girl, whom he wants to marry her 15-year-old son. “I’m sorry that I don’t have money left for poison so I can commit suicide, I can’t live with this pain and with my starving children, I can’t take it anymore,” Rukia despairs. Where Kabul ends and the mountain begins is a sea of adobe houses built over the last nine years by 800 displaced families from Kandahar. They came to the capital fleeing fighting between international forces and the Taliban and over the years this temporary camp has become her home. They have no drinking water or electricity, the stench is unbearable in the main arteries where the drains of each shack converge and an army of half-naked children play among the stones. It is the poorest of the poor who after the arrival of the Emirate have become miserable because they have lost the little help that came to this place. They are abandoned. Sharifa’s family shares a patio with three other families. Here a fire is lit once every three days to cook rice. The rest of the diet consists of dry bread, which is normally what is given to animals in Afghanistan because you can buy a kilo for just 30 Afghanis (0.30 euros in exchange). «Before we had temporary jobs and there were international organizations that helped us. Unicef made the wells, others brought some food and clothes… but all this has ended in the last year. The Taliban not only do not help, but they ask the Afghan organizations not to do it either with the aim of returning us to Kandahar, they do not want us in Kabul”, laments Malek Aladat, the director of this camp in which “there has been a the sale of girls for marriages due to extreme poverty.” A girl, 150,000 Afghanis 1. Ten-year-old Sharifa, sold for 150,000 Afghanis (1,500 euros) to a relative to pay her father’s medical bill in Pakistan / 2. Fariza, 3 years old, also sold for 150,000 Afghanis . Her mother doesn’t want to hear about it; her father does not rule out doing the same with his other two daughters / 3. Fariza and her father, Mohamed Azin Mikel Ayestaran Economic crisis Forced child marriage is a centuries-old practice in Afghanistan, which multiplies in situations of economic crisis such as which the country is suffering now. The more desperate the situation of the families, the more cases increase and these are more and more extreme as Unicef denounces, which in this last year has come to document the delivery in marriage of a baby of only 20 days. According to data from the UN agency, a quarter of women between the ages of 15 and 49 have been married before the age of 18. According to the country’s Constitution, approved by the previous regime, the legal age for marriage is 16 for girls and 18 for boys, but the weight of the tradition of child marriages, especially in rural areas, can the law. 150,000 Afghans «We are all sick at home and we have decided to sell it before his condition worsens and he dies. Better to get some money now than not be able to get a single Afghani if she dies »Mohamed Azin Fariza’s father, 3-year-old girl sold Fariza can’t even ask her father why she has done this to him. The girl is three years old. She lives a few meters from Sharifa and she too has just been sold for 150,000 Afghanis. “We are all sick at home and we have decided to sell it before her condition worsens and she dies. Better to get some money now than not be able to get a single Afghani if she dies », explains her father, Mohamed Azin, coldly. She has two other girls and does not rule out doing the same. In this case, the sale of the girl is a kind of guarantee to cover a loan and if Mohamed manages to repay the amount within ten years, he will not have to hand over Fariza. The mother doesn’t even want to hear about it and she yells at her husband that she would rather die than give up the girl. The little girl has blue eyes that illuminate the interior of the adobe house. She plays with her sisters oblivious to the situation in which she is the protagonist. Related News Report Yes Zaki’s death, a symbol of Afghans’ fear and hatred of the Taliban Mikel Ayestaran One year after the Taliban triumph, one year after the start of the chaotic evacuation of Kabul airport in which tens of thousands of people risked their lives to escape. This soccer player died trying to escape from a United States cargo plane in full swing Sharifa and Fariza put a name and a face to a trend that has worsened since the arrival of the ’emirate’. A custom that goes beyond religion and that forever marks the lives of some girls whose sale serves to temporarily alleviate the economic problems of families. Money is spent quickly in this context, but the sorrow of losing a daughter is never erased as shown by Rukia’s inconsolable crying as she holds Sharifa’s hand and Fariza’s mother’s muffled cry.
www.abc.es
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism