‘Here is your bride… please don’t beat her’: As Taliban recognises child marriage, Afghans ‘marry off’ girls and BABIES – and can only hope they are not raped before they even hit puberty

Parwana Malik was just nine years old when her father sold her as a bride to a man in his 50s, desperate to find enough money to support his family.

With tears streaming down his face, Abdul Malik pleaded with the groom to have mercy on his little daughter.

‘This is your bride. Please take care of him. “Now it’s your responsibility, please don’t beat him,” he said.

Parwana is one of millions of girls forced into underage marriages in poverty-stricken Afghanistan; Desperate families here have even resorted to selling their newborn babies to survive.

In late 2021, the UN children’s agency Unicef ​​said there were credible reports of families offering future marriage to their daughters as young as 20 days old in exchange for a dowry.

In a practice banned by most governments around the world, the Taliban last week officially recognized child marriage under a new law setting out specific rules regarding ‘virgin girls’.

The law states that a marriage with a child is legally valid, provided that the spouse’s social compatibility and dowry are appropriate, and that the child can only request annulment by court decision after reaching puberty.

The document also states that the silence of a ‘virgin girl’ is interpreted as consent to marriage, whereas the silence of a man or a previously married woman is not interpreted in this way.

In Afghanistan, where women and girls are unlikely to speak out for fear of punishment, the new legislation risks trapping many girls.

Parwana, her small frame covered in a black headscarf, is taken away by the ‘old man’ to whom she is sold to be watched by her father (far left) and mother (right).

The practice of selling daughters to older men for financial gain has unfortunately become a normalized response to deepening poverty in Afghanistan; This trend is expected to increase as the economic crisis worsens.

A surprising three out of four people cannot meet their basic daily needs. Unemployment is widespread, health systems are struggling, and aid that once came from around the world is now drying up.

Perhaps the harshest cuts are coming from the United States, once Afghanistan’s biggest donor, which has since cut nearly all aid to the country.

Other countries, such as Britain, have followed suit, and the UN says Afghanistan is now receiving less than 70 percent of the aid it received last year.

Women disproportionately bear the brunt of the worsening humanitarian crisis; This is a fact highlighted in a recent BBC documentary in which fathers admitted to having to sell their young daughters just to buy food.

Abdul Rashid Azimi, from Afghanistan’s Ghor province, told the BBC that the economic situation in his country, now ruled by the Taliban, was so bad that he was forced to make this terrible choice.

He said: ‘I come home from work with dry lips, hungry, thirsty, distressed and confused. My children come to me and say, ‘Dad, give us some bread.’ But what can I give? Where’s the job?’

She said she was so desperate for money that she had to sell one of her two seven-year-old twins, Roqia or Rohila.

‘If I sell one of my daughters, I can feed my remaining children for at least four years. It breaks my heart but it’s the only way.’

He is not the only one who committed this desperate act. Saeed Ahmad said he sold his five-year-old daughter Shaiqua due to appendicitis and a cyst on her liver.

‘I had no money to pay for medical expenses. “So I sold my daughter to a relative,” he said.

In February this year, the Taliban introduced a new penal code that created a caste system that put women on the same level as ‘slaves’.

Under the new law, husbands are allowed to beat their wives as long as there is no serious bodily harm.

This law leaves young brides vulnerable to extreme violence from older and powerful men.

In the heartbreaking case of Parwana featured on CNN, she He was sold by his father Abdul to a man named Qorban so that the family could buy food.

Abdul, who claimed he was ‘broken’ by guilt, broke down in tears as he begged the buyer not to beat his daughter.

Parwana, whose small face peeked out from her pale pink headscarf, told CNN: ‘My father sold me because we don’t have bread, rice or flour. He sold me to an old man.”

Abdul had previously sold Parwana’s 12-year-old sister to help his family survive.

Eight-year-old Afghan girl named Noqra Gul sold by her father Abdul

Abdul Rashid Azimi (pictured, centre) is preparing to sell one of his two daughters, Roqia (pictured, left) and Rohila (right)

‘We are eight family members. I have to sell to keep other family members alive,” he told the news outlet.

Qorban said that he will take care of Parwana as his child and that he already has a wife.

‘[Parwana] “It was cheap, and his father was very poor and needed money,” he said.

‘He will work at my house. I won’t beat him. I will treat him like family. ‘I’ll be gentle.’

But Abdul said he had no control over what happened to his daughter at the moment and recalled: ‘The old man told me, “I’m paying for the girl. What I do with her is none of your business, that’s my business.”‘

After the story sparked international outrage, a US-based charity called Too Young to Wed helped rescue the girl from this barbaric arrangement, and her siblings and mother were moved from the camp to a safe house in Herat, where they lived in a real home for the first time after living in tents.

Qorban also had to hide after the reactions from his own community.

However, not every child is this lucky; Reports have also emerged of poor parents promising future marriages to their daughters in exchange for a dowry.

‘Hearing these stories paralyzes my heart… This is not a marriage. “This is child rape,” said prominent Afghan women’s rights activist Wazhma Frogh.

He said he hears of cases every day, often involving girls under the age of ten, but it’s unclear whether young girls can be forced to have sex before they reach puberty.

Last year, the Taliban arrested two men who, ironically, tried to marry a six-year-old girl to a 45-year-old man.

According to local media reports, no charges were brought against them, but they forced the prospective son-in-law to wait until the girl was nine years old to take her home.

Since regaining control, the Taliban has banned girls from education beyond the sixth grade and imposed sweeping restrictions on women’s work and movement.

The new penal code, which came into force in February, does not condemn or prohibit sexual or psychological violence against women.

The law also prevents women from seeking refuge with their families to escape violence at home.

Article 34 of the law states that a woman who repeatedly goes to her father’s or other relatives’ house without her husband’s permission and “does not return home despite her husband’s wishes” will face a three-month prison sentence.

His family and relatives will also face punishment.

Seven-year-old Zohra sold to 52-year-old man for 170,000 Afghani (£1,386)

While girls continue to be disproportionate targets of this exploitation, young boys have also fallen victim to the Taliban government’s brutality; many were sexually abused by older men and turned into sex slaves for the elite.

Under the barbaric tradition of ‘Bacha Bazi’, young boys and adolescents are adorned with make-up, dressed in brightly colored women’s clothing and sent before groups of powerful men to dance and frolic.

Bacha Bazi, whose name means ‘boy’s game’, has existed for centuries and although Afghanistan’s current Taliban leadership claims to oppose it, the practice remains an open secret.

A report published in November 2024 detailed that boys are at high risk of commercial sexual exploitation through Bacha Bazi and are ‘often under-reported due to stigma and fear, particularly where perpetrators are police’.

“Despite the Taliban’s public stance against the practice, reports suggest it is widespread and largely unaddressed,” the UK government’s report said.

Survivors and survivors speak of beatings, rape, and psychological torture, only to be thrown out once they grow beards and are no longer desirable.

Unable to escape the trauma they experience, many turn to prostitution, drug addiction or suicide.

Although some boys reportedly volunteer, many are sold into this life by their impoverished families in a desperate attempt to make ends meet.

Others were quite simply kidnapped, including the police officers who were supposed to prevent Bacha Bazi’s revival.