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?

If men really want to help women suffering

They could provide free snips for men in such extreme poverty that selling their daughters will be likely

The snip is reversible, non invasive

Men will still be evil and rape women - but this could prevent the number of women suffering in future 😞😞

Until their much older husband dies and they are left with no sons, then they'll starve to death in the houses they aren't allowed to leave.

1. The girls will probably have brothers.
2. Their lives would be longer and less shit than if they die in childbirth off their nth baby.

Absolutely. I work with Afghani women (via Victory Afghanistan). There was and is plenty of resistance, but it's quickly squashed. And people are scared.
Let's not blame ordinary Afghanis for their own oppression.

In no way is this morally ok. It depresses wages leading to children going hungry in THIS country. It's not like we have no problems. Men doing this should be deported.

And as PP have said they have to pay a lot of money to get here so it's unlikely they're doing this for altruistic reasons. If they cared about their female relatives they'd stay and protect them from the horrific human rights abuses these women face - particularly if no male relatives to protect them - or at least try and bring them with them. The men coming here alone give no shits about their female relatives. Given the lack of medical care for women, there is a strong chance their female relatives will die between them leaving and arriving in the UK.

Young, fit male Afghan refugees who come alone are abandoning their female relatives to the whims of the Taliban, to live without medical care and often no-one to advocate for them. I would argue having a male relative willing to protect you in situ is probably worth more than theoretical foreign cash (that will probably be intercepted by men of one kind or another).

Of course not everyone's circumstances are the same but this undoubtedly applies to some of these men. As a feminist, I would like to see an asylum policy that prioritised women and children, who suffer the most in war and displacement, not unaccompanied men, who may or may not be a threat to women, because men.

Look at that little girl, it's appalling.

This was covered in “From our own correspondent” first item I think. It’s worth a listen - I felt for the whole family, including the father. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002wsjf

You have made an excellent argument for deporting single Afghani men. Thank you.

Last night, I wrote:

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.

I've reevaluated that position. My application of standards for individuals to nation states that have chosen to join the UN is a logical fallacy. A comparable situation is the Equality Act in this country placing obligations on non-human entities, not on individual people. We generally accept the idea that a body corporate can be legally or morally obliged to act in a way that an individual rightly should not be.

Trump has breached moral, and possibly UN treaty, obligations by stopping this aid.

This still doesn't make the famine itself artifical, it's a consequence of natural phenomena and Taliban mismanagement. But it does allow us to argue convincingly that richer UN members should contribute famine relief according to their means.

The men coming here alone give no shits about their female relatives

You know many? You have talked to many?

If they did, they would send their female relatives here and stay behind themselves.

100% agree. I actually think it's pretty awful in terms of human rights that we're accepting single men fit enough and well off enough to pay to get here (often having been denied asylum or convicted of crimes in other countries en route) and spending so much on them when there are far more vulnerable people - particularly women and children - facing far worse human rights abuses that that money could go towards saving - including providing safe routes out.

Edited to add: We have a finite amount of money to spend on this sort of thing, our country is in massive debt. It's a choice to put up single young men with no papers and no knowledge of whether they have previous rape or other convictions, costing the taxpayer millions, allowing them to roam freely and allow them to claim asylum. Whilst not paying for safe journeys home for the women working in contact with them (RIP Rhiannon Whyte). Then pay more hundreds of thousands in court cases when they commit crimes here, then more money to deport them. This is a choice and it's a choice that prioritising men over women. You could probably argue sex discrimination if anyone in power cared about women, they don't.

Don't be so stupid.

THIS.

Not in the slightest. If you only have enough money to send one person, you send the person who is in the worst situation if they stay behind, which is the women.

Silly, simplistic view of things.

@selffellatingouroborosofhate

Why are you swearing at me?
I answered your question.
I quoted your question in full with its question mark like so:
But, is it right to send aid to regimes like the Taliban where women and girls are treated like chattel?

and then I answered
“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.”

So why are you saying the following to me?
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 didn’t treat your question as a statement, I quoted with it’s question mark and then I answered your question.

There is no need to get angry.

Nope. Refusing to let men off the hook for fleeing the country whilst leaving their sisters behind. Refusing to pretend that these men care two hoots for their sisters.

You wonder why I'm angry after you put words in my mouth as follows?

However, my point still stands, why do you think that Trump deliberately starving Afghan civilians is good?

That's a question rather akin to "when did you stop beating your wife?" in that it is based on an assumption that I think that "Trump deliberately starving Afghan civilians is good", or that I even think that Trump is deliberately starving civilians as opposed to merely being utterly incompetent.

@selffellatingouroborosofhate
I'm also very much of the view that no one is obliged to send aid to a country in trouble.

You don’t feel obliged to help stop entire families starving.

You’d rather virtue signal and blame the fathers of the starving families for a situation beyond their control, what was it you said? Oh yes we can and absolutely should lay the blame at the feet of the very men [the fathers] who claim to be so heartbroken. and Men can choose not to father children in an environment where they will have to sell their daughters to survive.

Tell me how does a poor Afghan goat herder in 2016 predict that a famine will be manufactured by a future US president from half a world away 10 years after he impregnates his wife with a girl? Would he even have been able to predict in 2016 that the Taliban would take over in 2021 when his daughter is 4?

You know since you’re literally blaming fathers who had sex that produced girls born before the Taliban took over and the US and UK literally abandoned the Afghan people in 2021 and the famine that has gripped them this year in 2026?

You didn’t mention incompetence earlier you said
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.

You presented it as a good thing that Trump had caused famine.
I asked a question. What is wrong? Are you the only person who can ask questions?

You even replied to my question with
I'm genuinely not sure whether sending aid will just end up making the Taliban stronger.

So don’t pretend you weren’t implying Trump’s famine creation is really a good thing to weaken the Taliban.

@selffellatingouroborosofhate
I asked
“However, my point still stands, why do you think that Trump deliberately starving Afghan civilians is good?”

and you directly answered
”I'm genuinely not sure whether sending aid will just end up making the Taliban stronger.”

Why angry? You seem to get angry a lot. Angry at answers to your questions, angry if you’re asked a question…

I see now you have reconsidered you can disregard my earlier post on the obligation of richer nations, especially the US and UK who let the Taliban take over Afghanistan, to send food aid.

This still doesn't make the famine itself artifical, it's a consequence of natural phenomena and Taliban mismanagement

Just letting you know that the definition of “artificial” means caused by human decisions. Whether it is Taliban mismanagement or Trump or both cutting the amount of food aid by 70% that pushed the Afghans from food insecurity into famine, it is still an artificial famine.