War Against Women

Child Brides "sold" in Afghanistan

According to a BBC news site item, girls as young as nine years old are being married to older men in northern Afghanistan in exchange for food and other goods.

Badakhshan's independent MP Fauzia Kofi says she has seen an increasing number of such child brides in the last two years.

"I don't call it marriage, I call it selling children," she says.

"A nine or 10-year-old - you give her away for wheat and two cows."

The reason given for this atrocious use of female children is poverty. Government officials say the situation will not soon change because Afghanistan is a poor country, and Badakhshan is its poorest province.

But, I don't think it's poverty. Poverty may be the environment in which the family choosing to do this to their girl children makes the choice. But, it's not just poverty. It's the valuing of women and children that makes them choose to sell the child into sexual, reproductive, and labor slavery. And, slavery is what it is. These girls will live or die by their reproductive organs.
 

A midwife in the village of Khordakhan, Hanufa Mah, says she tries to teach parents not to marry their girls too young but some feel they have no choice.

One girl she helped through labour was only 10 years old. 

"The girl was so small. I held her in my lap until the child was born," she says.

UN figures show that more women die in childbirth in Badakhshan than anywhere else in the world, and mothers under the age of 15 are most at risk.

The girls of Afghanistan are being sold and made to have babies because of their religious and cultural background as well as because of poverty.

What can you do to help those girls and others like them around the world?

The not-so-bitter truth

“You’re just bitter.”  This is a phrase commonly used to silence women.  Another variation says, “You are so unforgiving.”

The bitterness accusation is used to bully a woman and tell her how she “should” feel instead of asking her how she does feel.  Someone who uses this label expects her to pretend there has been no harm, no foul.  She is expected to pretend the one who hurt her is a great person, even if she knows he is a terrible person.  If she does not pretend, it is because she is “bitter and unforgiving.”

Abusers nearly always sling this accusation at their victims.  She may have accepted him back with open arms after a dozen violent episodes, but the first time she hesitates to “forgive and forget,” he will tell her she is a bitter and unforgiving person.

If only it stopped there.  The world does not want to hear the voice of the abused, either.  Let her speak of abuse in the divorce hearing, and the judge may roll his eyes.  When he makes his ruling concerning child support and visitation, he will keep in mind that the woman is “bitter.”

Let her speak of it to the church, and they will label her a feminist – even if she firmly believes in male headship and supports all the patriarchal viewpoints.

The fact is, no one wants to hear it.  In most circles, she can say, “My former husband was abusive,” and only be labeled a feminist.  But if she ever says, “He backhanded me across the face when I disagreed with him, and he dragged me through the house by my hair” – now, she is “bitter.”  Her words are interpreted as angry and violent, as if only a violent person could speak such awful words.

The message to abused women:  Shut up about it.  Go back to being ashamed, as if that hand across your face had left a nasty stain that made you evil rather than him.  It is not dignified or proper to speak of the ugliness of abuse.  It offends our sensibilities.  By making us hear about your experience, you are violating our sheltered little world.  We can forgive the man for hitting you, but we cannot forgive you for having the bad manners to actually talk about it.

Speaking the truth is not a sign of bitterness.  It is a sign of wholeness and stark, unblinking courage.  It takes guts to go beyond “He abused me” and say “He held a pillow over my face until I thought I was dying,” or even “He did things so unspeakable, I cannot make myself say them.” 

Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”  A woman may know the truth without speaking it, and she may in silence escape her own situation.  But a lone woman with sealed lips will not change the world.  It is not only the woman who must be set free; society itself needs to be set free from a culture of violence against women.

We must speak the truth to our society, so that we can all be set free.