Monday, March 31, 2008 America pimps 9 year olds in
Afghanistanhttp://tinyurl.com/33xqp6
The Opium Brides of Afghanistan
In the country's poppy-growing provinces, farmers are being
forced to sell their daughters to pay loans.
Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau
NEWSWEEK
Updated: 1:19 PM ET Mar 29, 2008
Khalida's father says she's 9or maybe 10. As much as Sayed
Shah loves his 10 children, the functionally illiterate Afghan farmer can't
keep track of all their birth dates. Khalida huddles at his side, trying to
hide beneath her chador and headscarf. They both know the family can't keep her
much longer. Khalida's father has spent much of his life raising opium, as men
like him have been doing for decades in the stony hillsides of eastern
Afghanistan and on the dusty southern plains. It's the only reliable cash crop
most of those farmers ever had. Even so, Shah and his family barely got by:
traffickers may prosper, but poor farmers like him only subsist. Now he's
losing far more than money. "I never imagined I'd have to pay for growing opium
by giving up my daughter," says Shah.
The family's heartbreak began when Shah borrowed $2,000 from a local
trafficker, promising to repay the loan with 24 kilos of opium at harvest time.
Late last spring, just before harvest, a government crop-eradication team
appeared at the family's little plot of land in Laghman province and destroyed
Shah's entire two and a half acres of poppies. Unable to meet his debt, Shah
fled with his family to Jalalabad, the capital of neighboring Nangarhar
province. The trafficker found them anyway and demanded his opium. So Shah took
his case before a tribal council in Laghman and begged for leniency. Instead,
the elders unanimously ruled that Shah would have to reimburse the trafficker
by giving Khalida to him in marriage. Now the family can only wait for the
45-year-old drugrunner to come back for his prize. Khalida wanted to be a
teacher someday, but that has become impossible. "It's my fate," the child says.
Afghans disparagingly call them "loan brides"daughters given in
marriage by fathers who have no other way out of debt. The practice began with
the dowry a bridegroom's family traditionally pays to the bride's father in
tribal Pashtun society. These days the amount ranges from $3,000 or so in
poorer places like Laghman and Nangarhar to $8,000 or more in Helmand,
Afghanistan's No. 1 opium-growing province. For a desperate farmer, that bride
price can be salvationbut at a cruel cost. Among the Pashtun, debt marriage
puts a lasting stain on the honor of the bride and her family. It brings shame
on the country, too. President Hamid Karzai recently told the nation: "I call
on the people [not to] give their daughters for money; they shouldn't give them
to old men, and they shouldn't give them in forced marriages."
--MORE--
Posted by CRIMES AND CORRUPTION OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS mparent7777
Marc Parent CCNWON at 12:11 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: afghanistan, children
http://tinyurl.com/33xqp6
America pimps 6 year old Iraqi girls http://tinyurl.com/2mnacq
6 year old Iraqi girls forced into prostitution
As a result of the Iraqi invasion many Iraqi girls have fled the violence to
Syria. In order to support their families many girls resort to prostitution.
If this video doesn't make you oppose the War then you have no heart.
Added: March 30, 2008
Posted by CRIMES AND CORRUPTION OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS mparent7777
Marc Parent CCNWON at 11:58 AM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: children, iraq war, syria
http://tinyurl.com/2mnacq
MARC PARENT, mparent7777, mparent,
ccnwon
CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS
http://mparent7777-1.blogspot.com/
http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/blog/38
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