In a culture that relegates women to a status of being possessions of men, it's not at all surprising to see them traded as such. By Alisa Tang for the Associated Press:
JALALABAD, Afghanistan - Unable to scrounge together the $165 he needed to repay a loan to buy sheep, Nazir Ahmad made good on his debt by selling his 16-year-old daughter to marry the lender's son.
"He gave me nine sheep," Ahmad said, describing his family's woes since taking the loan. "Because of nine sheep, I gave away my daughter."
Seated beside him in the cramped compound, his daughter Malia's eyes filled with tears. She used a black scarf to wipe them away.
Despite advances in women's rights and at least one tribe's move to outlaw the practice, girls are traded like currency in Afghanistan and forced marriages are common. Antiquated tribal laws authorize the practice known as "bad" in the Afghan language Dari — and girls are used to settle disputes ranging from debts to murder.
Diyya, or blood money, as compensation offered as an alternative to exact retribution (qisas, i.e., "an eye for an eye") is enshrined in Islamic law. Where cash is short or non-existent, economies revert to bartering.
Such exchanges bypass the hefty bride price of a traditional betrothal, which can cost upward of $1,000. Roughly two out of five Afghan marriages are forced, says the country's Ministry of Women's Affairs.
"It's really sad to do this in this day and age, exchange women," said Manizha Naderi, the director of the aid organization Women for Afghan Women. "They're treated as commodities."
Though violence against women remains widespread, Afghanistan has taken significant strides in women's rights since the hard-line Taliban years, when women were virtual prisoners — banned from work, school or leaving home unaccompanied by a male relative. Millions of girls now attend school and women fill jobs in government and media.
There are also signs of change for the better inside the largest tribe in eastern Afghanistan — the deeply conservative Shinwaris.
Shinwari elders from several districts signed a resolution this year outlawing several practices that harm girls and women. These included a ban on using girls to settle so-called blood feuds — when a man commits murder, he must hand over his daughter or sister as a bride for a man in the victim's family. The marriage ostensibly "mixes blood to end the bloodshed." Otherwise, revenge killings often continue between the families for generations.
Jan Shinwari, a businessman and provincial council member, said a BBC radio report by a female journalist from the Shinwari tribe, Malalai Shinwari, had exposed the trade of girls and shamed the elders into passing the resolution to end the practice.
"I did this work not because of human rights, but for Afghan women, for Afghan girls not to be exchanged for stupid things," Jan Shinwari said. "When Malalai Shinwari reported this story about exchanging girls for animals, when I heard this BBC report, I said, 'Let's make a change.'"
Now a lawmaker in Parliament, Malalai Shinwari said her report had the impact she intended. She called the changes to tribal laws a "big victory for me."
About 600 elders from the Shinwar district put their purple thumbprint "signatures" on the handwritten resolution.
More than 20 Shinwari leaders gathered in the eastern city of Jalalabad, nodding earnestly and muttering their consent as the changes were discussed last week.
They insisted that women given away for such marriages — including those to settle blood feuds — were treated well in their new families. But the elders declined requests to meet any of the women or their families.
"Nobody treats them badly," Malik Niaz said confidently, stroking his long white beard. "Everyone respects women."
But Afghan women say this could not be further from the truth.
"By establishing a family relationship, we want to bring peace. But in reality, that is not the case," said Hangama Anwari, an independent human rights commissioner and founder of the Women and Children Legal Research Foundation.
Read it all.
Naseem will probably beg out of commenting on this because she is too upset over the shootings at the red mosque.
""Nobody treats them badly," Malik Niaz said confidently, stroking his long white beard. "Everyone respects women."
....wanna bet?.....
If she is only worth 9 sheep, she's gotta be UGLY !
...he owed $165.00...lets see...that makes each sheep worth about 18.33, ...hmmmm sheep are cheap...on the other hand.. you now have nine lovers....
How many sheep are you worth Naseem?
Good thing we didn't permit these kinds of outrageous and subhuman practices to be enshrined in the new Afghan Constitution.
Oh, wait, Article 3 of their Constitution essentially decrees Sharia Law.
Forget I mentioned it. Good luck, girls.
Old Mr. Peep traded his daughter for some sheep,
To pay off his debt, he was in so deep.
One girl is worth nine sheep? Something tells me these people would much rather have the sheep if given a choice. And then these people wonder why we think they're nuts and want to keep our distance from them?
Compare today's response to this sort of thing to the anti-slavery movement of the 1800's.
By any reasonable standard there should be a firestorm in the press over a story like this. But all we see is this one item in AP, undoubtedly out of hundreds that have been passed over.
At $165 apiece you could pick yourself up a harem of 5 or 10 girls, including shipping, for less than the price of a good American car.
And the girl in the AP item, what you could see of her, didn't look all that terrible.
Can you imagine what we would see in the press if some ordinary non-moslem American went over to Afghanistan to buy himself a few girls ?!?!?!
Never believe anyone from the big mainline feminist organizations who tell you that they have some interest in the general welfare of women. Their only interest is in getting political power for themselves. The women whose difficulties they used as a pretext have no significance to them at all.
You can tell by the silence.
Actually, Papa looks like a pretty shrewd operator. Assuming he got a ram and 8 ewes, he now has lots of wool every year, milk for cheeses, and lots of lambs every year for barbecuing, or for increasing his flock. With his daughter all he could do was cut her hair to sell to a wig-maker maybe once a year; and if he barbecued her, that was the end of the whole enterprise.
Forgot to add: with the ewes he could act as the ram himself, a very popular pastime among the moslems. Or maybe make more money by renting them out to randy neighbor lads.
Marisol, thank you for the elaboration regarding sharia law because the article makes it appear as this is something afghanis resort to, not something out of islamic law.
screaming_eagle writes: "If she is only worth 9 sheep, she's gotta be UGLY !"
Not at the Afghan rate of exchange.
9 sheep works out to about a year's supply of lamb chops. Go to your local supermarket and price that out.
joeblough writes: "Never believe anyone from the big mainline feminist organizations who tell you that they have some interest in the general welfare of women."
Today, Western feminist organizations are primarily concerned with domestic Western politics. But it didn't used to be that way. Prior to 9-11, it was feminist organizations that called attention to the plight of Afghan women under the Taliban, for example.
The turning point came with 9-11 and the War on Terror. Bush's decision to use military force against the Taliban split the Western feminist movement badly. Most of them, being political leftists, dropped the issue of female oppression in the Muslim world in favor of a pacifist-multiculturalist agenda that puts them on the side of Islamists. In today's Britain, British feminists march arm in arm with niqab-clad Muslim women in antiwar protests and anti-American protests.
The "Feminist Majority" is an organization of a few remaining feminists who didn't give up on the fight for women in the Third World. They still talk about it. But not often.
"Today, Western feminist organizations are primarily concerned with domestic Western politics. ''
.....Todays feminist organizations are reduced to trying to get votes for their favorite dhimmicrat politician who favors their opinion on abortion...these "Femi-Nazis" have lost all sense of supporting womens rights around the globe...they have become a worthless organization...
"The group investigated about 500 cases of girls given in marriage to settle blood feuds and found only four or five that ended happily. Much more often, the girl suffered for a crime committed by a male relative, she said. "We punish a person who has done nothing wrong, but the person who has killed someone is free. He can move freely, and he can kill a second person, third person because he will never be punished," Anwari said. A girl is often beaten and sometimes killed because when the family looks at her, they see the killer. "Because they lost someone, they take it out on her," Naderi said.
Yet another fine example of how being a female in a muslim country means having to bear the burden of all the deeds done by the males. Just like when they blame and murder rape victims for getting raped.
Muslims say men are the "caretakers of women", but these bullies beat women, punish them with rape, mutilate them, sell them, treat them worse than animals, and then cover them from head to toe so the men don't have to be reminded of their own depravity. This is not a healthy religion, it is just an excuse for weak men to feel superior by dominating and abusing others.