WUNRN
AFGHANISTAN - FATHERS BARTER
DAUGHTERS TO SETTLE DRUG DEBTS
A journalist spends 10 years tracking down the tragic fate of one opium
bride.
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Afghan girls are increasingly becoming casualties of the county's drug
trade. (Mohammad Ismail/Reuters)
I had been looking for
her for 10 years. I nearly got kidnapped searching for her. I wrote a book inspired by her. And tonight,
I was about to talk to her.
Darya was a green-eyed, 12-year-old
schoolgirl who enjoyed playing barefoot in the sand. Her childhood was cut
short when her drug dealer father sold her to a smuggler 34 years older than
her.
My fingers trembled as I
dialed the number her mother gave me.
We met in summer 2003 in
a dusty village in
In the last 10 years
since I met Darya, the number of opium brides has risen across
Mrs. Parwanta, who did
not want her first name mentioned for safety reasons, has been working on drug
prevention and education in
Najibullah Quraishi, an
Afghan journalist and filmmaker, said he met at least 100 families who sold
their daughters to pay off traffickers. His award-winning 2012 documentary Opium Brides chronicles
several of the girls' heartbreaking stories and the debts farming families fall
into when the government eradicates their poppy farms.
In the wake of foreign
troop withdrawal and the potential return of the Taliban to parts of
Fading international aid
and interest in
Bartering girls in marriage
to pay off loans -- and not just drug debts -- has been practiced in the region
for centuries. But it has increased exponentially due to poverty brought on by
30 years of war. Parand said no opium brides have reached out to her group for
help. These young girls mostly live on the borders of the country, where
trafficking is rampant and access to foreign aid and NGOs limited.
That leaves many of
these girls having to submit or resist on their own. Some of them commit
suicide. Nasima, a member of a women's council in
The 22-year-old Darya
picked up her cell phone after the sixth ring. Her voice was louder, more
confident, more patient. She had been expecting my call. We asked about each
others' families and well-being. Then I apologized for failing to rescue her
from the life she had feared, from Haji Sufi, the man who had become her
husband and father of her children. There was a pause.
"I waited a long
time for you to come and save me," she said. "But this was my
destiny. I'm used to it now," she said, letting out a 10-year sigh.
In 2003, when I first
met Darya, her father Touraj had disappeared to avoid traffickers hunting him
down. Even after selling two of his daughters, he remained in debt to
smugglers. The older daughter's husband never showed up to claim his bride. But
Darya's husband, who already had another wife and eight children, wanted to
take the young girl from
But every time Haji Sufi
came, Darya cursed her husband and ran away from him. Darya looked to me for
support, knowing I had a different code of ethics and access to the outside
world. One sizzling summer afternoon, I interviewed Sufi while Darya sat beside
me. She grabbed my coat and trembled. "Please don't let him take me,"
she whispered in my ear.
That was the last time I
saw her. She had come barefoot to my guide's house after I left that summer, asking
that I return and free her from a forced marriage. I reported the case to the
Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, whose members did nothing. Afghan
authorities told me she was one of thousands. They said that if she didn't go
with her husband, her mother and five other siblings would suffer the
consequences.
I wrote a story about
her that was syndicated in several different countries, and readers sent money
to her family. The following summer I delivered the money, but it was too late.
Sufi had taken her to
I didn't find Darya.
I returned to the
My first phone
conversation with her was very emotional, as if I had known her all these
years, even though she had remained a mystery for a decade. She recounted her
life as a wife and mother with a mix of humor and tragedy. She considered
herself unlucky, but luckier than opium brides who did not have the honorable
title of wife. Darya knew other girls like her have been trafficked to become
drug mules and prostitutes.
Darya's life has turned
out better than I had imagined. She's the younger wife and has become the
matriarch of her compound.
"Now they give me a
lot of respect," she said.
She had cried for a year
after arriving in
"Now my hambaq (husband's other wife)
and I are friends. He no longer sleeps with her. I tell her 'you send him to me
now that he's an old man. I have no use for him,'" she said, laughing.
She quickly learned
Pashto, but it took her four years to get pregnant. At 18, she had a son, and
he became her reason to live. She spent her days baking bread in a clay oven,
cooking, doing laundry, and looking after her child. Twice a year, Sufi took
Darya to
On one of her trips to
Touraj gave her the cell
phone she was using as a way of making peace. Darya has forgiven her father,
but not his deed. "He should've found another way. What he did to me was
wrong," she said.
During the first years
of her marriage, Darya only left the Marjah compound to shop with her husband
or to go to the doctor. Until the
"I had lost a lot
until that point, but the worst pain hit me after I lost my child. I can never
forget his loss," she said, choking up.
After her firstborn's
death, she had a second son, Barat, who is now 2, and a daughter, Zahra, now 8
months old. She can roam the bazaar in her burqa with the other women from the
compound. There are now fewer moral restrictions, but the night raids and house
searches were a regular part of life for her family. American troops, who have
left control to Afghan authorities now, searched their compound five times in
the last three years. Darya has met many other opium brides in Marjah on her
outings. A network of Helmand farmers and smugglers interact with traffickers
in
Darya's relationship
with Sufi changed after she bore his children. He listens to her, shows her
affection, and allows her to make many decisions, but she doesn't love him.
Darya plans to send her
daughter to stay with her mother once she's school-aged so she can get an
education in