Afghanistan - selling children - guess which ones?

[ArabellaScott]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0q25dwj807o

Nobody would deny poverty is a huge problem in Afghanistan:

'The US – once the top donor to Afghanistan – cut nearly all aid to the country last year. Many other key donors have also significantly reduced contributions, including the UK. Current UN figures show that the aid received so far this year is 70% lower than in 2025.
Severe drought – which has affected more than half the provinces in the country - is compounding problems.'

The BBC presents this as 'an impossible choice' made by 'Afghan fathers'.

Why is it just the fathers making this choice, BBC?

Why is it just daughters sold, BBC?

There have been women and girls helped to leave in small numbers. You are right that they will struggle to leave without the men in their lives supporting them.

https://bylinetimes.com/2022/03/02/girls-in-afghanistan-have-power/

Sarah Porter, who organised the assistance and funding, was pulled from the Spine Montane ultramarathon earlier this year because pro-Taliban men didn't like her doing that.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/petitions_noticeboard/5475690-5475690-woman-withdrawn-from-ultrarace-due-to-threats

JK Rowling was instrumental in getting a group of 100 people - female lawyers and their families - out.

And they are all having way more children than they can afford because they have no access to contraception.

Your misogyny, demonstrated by your refusal to hold men to account for their actions, is breathtaking. I'll write the factual version of that sentence:

And they are all having way more children than they can afford because the men keep putting their dicks in their wives.

No one ever got pregnant without sperm meeting an ovum. It is very simple to prevent sperm from meeting ova: men keep their semen out of women's bodies.

As you said to a previous poster, "use some common sense". Despite the widespread pretence that sex isn't real and gender is all-important, we all know how babies are made. And strangely, "I identify as a boy" isn't protecting these girls.

The male small boat arrivals from Afghanistan are probably sending money home to support their parents and siblings.

You think that Afghanistan (and the Taliban) are big on trans-rights? 😂

And if you think that advising married couples to stop having sex is a reliable alternative to contraception then I don't know what to tell you. That's never reduced the birth rate in any country anywhere.

You're all missing something here. There is obviously a caste of well off older men able to afford to buy these girls, probably up to four of them, probably for a small amount, and they are beyond any chance of deposing them. They are probably in the government and probably in the opium business. With external support.

Because of men.

Well the ones who are raping children here probably aren't, and there's quite a few of them. According to the Government they only get a minimal amount of cash per week when waiting for asylum claims, so they can't unless they're undertaking criminal activity.. What we do know is that the women and children would be much better off taking those men's place.

Edited to add: And even if they were 'sending money home' the chances it would be intercepted by the Taliban and used for their ends is extremely high.

This is a shit argument for allowing illegal male Afghan immigrants to stay in our country.

In Kabul they can — there are some in the first minute here. Whether they can get over the border is another question.

That might be the idea, but as they have to pay to get smuggled from country to country I'm not sure how the economics stack up. There's probably as many different reasons for travelling to Europe as there are migrants. Some for wholesome unselfish reasons, some fleeing crimes even the Taliban couldn't stomach and a whole spectrum in between.

I'm not going engage with your bad faith deliberate twisting of what I wrote.

This is a shit argument for allowing illegal male Afghan immigrants to stay in our country.

FFS read what I write and don't add extra stuff. I didn't say we should let them stay. I was explaining a possible motive for them coming here.

According to the Government they only get a minimal amount of cash per week when waiting for asylum claims, so they can't unless they're undertaking criminal activity.

There is a huge black market in hired Deliveroo etc accounts that take advantage of the "substitute worker" rule that allows these gig economy platforms to claim that the workers are self-employed. If I walk through the city I work in at around 7pm, I see gatherings of young brown men on bicycles with food delivery bags and covered faces talking in languages that I can't understand. That's how they earn money on top of their asylum seeker payments: they hire a JustEat etc account that belongs to someone else who controls dozens or more such accounts just to rent them out, they get a bike, often from the person they rent the account from, and they deliver food to British people too lazy to collect it themselves.

Both trafficked people and asylum seekers work this way, as well as in hand car washes, nail bars, and brothels. It's everywhere in plain sight.

Any decent man would refuse to impregnate his starving wife when he cannot feed his existing children.

You are making excuses for male selfishness. He has two hands, he can masturbate if he's horny. He does not have a right to sex and, if he had a shred of decency, he would abstain under such adverse circumstances.

Right.

Let's agree that the men involved are terrible.

How does that help this situation at all, in any way?

So far, we've got suggestions ranging from banning Afghan men from seeking asylum to encouraging Afghan men to sell themselves, but so far I've seen not one sensible idea as to any way we can help little girls being sold into sexual and domestic slavery.

You weren't offering solutions. You were offering excuses for shit men. Demanding solutions from me is an attempt to deflect from how you were making excuses for shit men.

Men can choose not to father children in an environment where they will have to sell their daughters to survive. Unlike the women in such a misogynist shithole, they have some agency. It is up to them to use it.

What we can do, as onlookers, is refuse to let these men off the hook for their choices. We can refuse to sympathise with them more than the real victims, their daughters.

We can lobby our govt to welcome those few women and children who can escape. And we can donate to Sarah Porter's charity once it is properly established.

I was saying that suggesting the men sell themselves is a stupid suggestion and most 3 yos could see why.

You might as well suggest that the men go out and catch magic money pixies.

You said this: And if you think that advising married couples to stop having sex is a reliable alternative to contraception then I don't know what to tell you.

I haven't suggested that the men sell themselves. I don't believe that any human being should be for sale.

It's irrelevant that it's the fault of the men.

Telling married couples not to have sex doesn't work.

And say if it did, what would the parents then do in old age, especially the women who are likely to be widowed, without sons?

The way things are now in Afghanistan, not having children isn't an option. The girls are expendable and the boys are needed by their families.

Short of overthrowing the Taliban (which we've already done once, only for them to be let straight back in a few years on) and completely restructuring Afghan society, there isn't a good solution to how to stop this happening.

Men can choose not to father children in an environment where they will have to sell their daughters to survive. Unlike the women in such a misogynist shithole, they have some agency. It is up to them to use it.

Famine isn’t something you can predict when Trump waves a pen and then a month later 70% of food aid disappears from the market. Then the months after that you also have that year’s harvest failing.

I am not sympathising with the Taliban in this, they are evil misogynists. I am sympathising with the regular families caught under the thumb of the Taliban and then being collectively punished by Trump.

I am pointing out your theory of very poor men having “agency” causing this situation when it is Trump cancelling food aid and pushing the country into an artificial famine when they already have children and/or a pregnant wife.

The same thing has been going on in Gaza. Famine wasbeing used as a weapon. The ones who suffer the most from stopping humanitarian aid is always the women and children.

When we are examining and critiquing the BBC's misdirected sympathy "oh these poor men, selling their daughters to be raped" and calling out how the original report said "children" when it's mostly girls being sold, we can and absolutely should lay the blame at the feet of the very men who claim to be so heartbroken.

There's very few practical things we can do. But one thing we can insist on is honouring these girls by centreing them as the principal victims and giving them our sympathy

Trump cancelling food aid and pushing the country into an artificial famine

It strikes me that, far from the famine being artificially induced by Trump, it has been caused by the Taliban mismanaging the country. Trump has stopped compensating for the Taliban's mismanagement of their own country.

The ones who suffer the most from stopping humanitarian aid is always the women and children.

This is entirely true. But, is it right to send aid to regimes like the Taliban where women and girls are treated like chattel? When the people mistreated had being black in common instead of being female, most of the world agreed that boycotting South Africa was the moral action.

But, is it right to send aid to regimes like the Taliban where women and girls are treated like chattel?

Yes it is always right to send humanitarian aid. Edited to add- the food aid isn’t going to the Taliban regime, it was going direct to women and children.

Glad to see you agree that stopping 70% of food humanitarian aid by Trump has caused famine in Afghanistan as a sort of collective punishment for Taliban mismanagement.

Taliban mismanaging the country is generally true. However, according to the UN WFP prior to Trump cancelling food aid, Afghanistan was in severe food insecurity due to a multi-year drought, hostilities and forced returns from Pakistan, and natural disasters like earthquake shocks.

So not all Taliban, but even if it was 100% Taliban fault that Afghanistan is experiencing a famine, I don’t think it is ethical to just stand back and let regular people starve to death. We never let SA go into famine. The boycotts and sanctions were aimed at reducing profit of SA companies that actively propped up Aparheid and social snubs.

However, my point still stands, why do you think that Trump deliberately starving Afghan civilians is good? Is it not entirely predictable what would happen to women and girls in a manufactured famine?

Food aid would have prevented fathers of starving families from securing a bride price now for their daughters’ future arranged marriages at 15/16.

The Taliban are responsible for creating a society where women cannot make a living and girls cannot access education, Trump is now joining those ranks imho by now creating a famine that then forces girls into arranged marriages to prevent their family from starving to death.

If he hadn’t cut off aid, then many of these girls could have had at least some choice in who to marry.

Trump has done the exact opposite of helping these women and girls, he has sided with the Taliban to make their lives even worse, if they’re lucky. The unlucky ones die of starvation. Humanitarian aid is literally a lifeline.

There's very few practical things we can do. But one thing we can insist on is honouring these girls by centreing them as the principal victims and giving themour sympathy

Yes, I am sure they prefer your centring and honouring them as primary victims on an internet forum they will never see and never be able to read over speaking up to our leaders and protesting until humanitarian food aid starts flowing through the UN WFP so they aren’t promised in an arranged marriage at 15/16 to pay off a debt for food today so they didn’t starve to death now.

FFS will you read what I actually write? I was asking a question, not making a statement. I've seen someone interpreting a question as a statement twice on FWR in the last few days. Is this a new linguistic trend, or is it a non-autistic-people behaviour that I've just not noticed before?

I'm genuinely not sure whether sending aid will just end up making the Taliban stronger. We know that aid can be, and is, intercepted by corrupt regimes.

I'm also very much of the view that no one is obliged to send aid to a country in trouble. It may be a kind act, but it's not an obligation, just as I'm not obliged to donate money to a charity and I'm not responsible for them having a financial crisis if I stop. The US haven't done anything that they aren't entitled to do. We can't force Trump's hand. If we are confident that the aid will reach the people who need it, we can lobby our own govt to send more aid.

The Taliban are responsible for creating a society where women cannot make a living and girls cannot access education,

And cannot access healthcare without a male guardian with them. Women have died because their husbands were working elsewhere during a medical emergency. The Taliban have jurisdiction in Afghanistan. Trump doesn't. The Taliban could let the women return to work and the girls return to school tomorrow. They could let women out of the house unescorted tomorrow so that they can go to hospital.

The boycotts and sanctions were aimed at reducing profit of SA companies that actively propped up Aparheid and social snubs.

What we could and should do immediately is to stop playing against Afghanistan in sports. That can't be diverted by a corrupt regime.