10-yr-old girl sold to 45-yr-old man says, "It is my fate"
Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2008 10:28 amAfghan 'Opium Brides' Pay the Price for Poppy Eradication
March 31, 2008
http://in.news.yahoo.
com/financialexpress/20080331/r_t_fe_wl_asia/twl-afghan-opium-brides-pay-the-price-fo-85943ae.html?printer=1
As Afghanistan battles to check growing poppy production, there thrives
a disturbing trend behind the scene, where daughters of poppy
producers pay the price for the unpaid loans owed to the drug traffickers.
Termed as "opium brides", the daughters of poor poppy farmers are
often given to drug traffickers if their fathers are unable to pay the
loan taken for growing the illicit crop because of the official action.
In a report in its upcoming issue, Newsweek takes the case of an
illiterate poor farmer in Laghman Province who borrowed USD 2,000 from a
local traffickers promising to pay back with 24 kilos of opium at
harvest time.
But officials destroyed his two and half acre poppy farm.
Unable to pay, he fled but was located by the trafficker and then
village elders decided that he should give his 10-year old daughter to
45-year old trafficker to settle the debt.
"It is my fate," she told the magazine. She had desired to be become a
teacher.
Afghan call these girls "loan brides"_* and their number is increasing
since the opium eradication programme began, Newsweek reported.
The practice, explains the magazine, 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 USD 3,000 or so in poorer places like
Laghman and Nangarhar to USD 8,000 or more in Helmand, Afghanistan's No
1 opium-growing province.
All the same, local farmers were quoted as saying that a man can get
killed for failing to repay a loan. No one, the magazine says, knows how
many debt weddings take place in Afghanistan, where 93 per cent of the
world's heroin originates.
But Afghans say the number of loan brides keeps rising as
poppy-eradication efforts push more farmers into default.
"This will be our darkest year since 2000," says Baz Mohammad, 65-year
old former opium farmer in Nangarhar was quoted as saying.
"Even more daughters will be sold this year."
The old man lives with the anguish of selling his own 13-year-old
daughter in 2000, after Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar banned poppy
growing.
"Lenders never show any mercy," he said.
The local farmers are quoted by Newsweek as saying more than one debtor
has been bound hand and foot, then locked into a small windowless room
with a smoldering fire, slowly choking to death.
While law enforcers predict yet another record opium harvest in
Afghanistan this spring, the magazine says most farmers are struggling
to survive.
An estimated 500,000 Afghan families support themselves by raising
poppies, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
Last year, those growers received an estimated USD one billion for their
cropsabout USD 2,000 per household.
With at least six members in the average family, opium growers' per
capita income is roughly USD 300.
The real profits go to the traffickers, their Taliban allies and the
crooked officials who help them operate.
March 31, 2008
http://in.news.yahoo.
com/financialexpress/20080331/r_t_fe_wl_asia/twl-afghan-opium-brides-pay-the-price-fo-85943ae.html?printer=1
As Afghanistan battles to check growing poppy production, there thrives
a disturbing trend behind the scene, where daughters of poppy
producers pay the price for the unpaid loans owed to the drug traffickers.
Termed as "opium brides", the daughters of poor poppy farmers are
often given to drug traffickers if their fathers are unable to pay the
loan taken for growing the illicit crop because of the official action.
In a report in its upcoming issue, Newsweek takes the case of an
illiterate poor farmer in Laghman Province who borrowed USD 2,000 from a
local traffickers promising to pay back with 24 kilos of opium at
harvest time.
But officials destroyed his two and half acre poppy farm.
Unable to pay, he fled but was located by the trafficker and then
village elders decided that he should give his 10-year old daughter to
45-year old trafficker to settle the debt.
"It is my fate," she told the magazine. She had desired to be become a
teacher.
Afghan call these girls "loan brides"_* and their number is increasing
since the opium eradication programme began, Newsweek reported.
The practice, explains the magazine, 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 USD 3,000 or so in poorer places like
Laghman and Nangarhar to USD 8,000 or more in Helmand, Afghanistan's No
1 opium-growing province.
All the same, local farmers were quoted as saying that a man can get
killed for failing to repay a loan. No one, the magazine says, knows how
many debt weddings take place in Afghanistan, where 93 per cent of the
world's heroin originates.
But Afghans say the number of loan brides keeps rising as
poppy-eradication efforts push more farmers into default.
"This will be our darkest year since 2000," says Baz Mohammad, 65-year
old former opium farmer in Nangarhar was quoted as saying.
"Even more daughters will be sold this year."
The old man lives with the anguish of selling his own 13-year-old
daughter in 2000, after Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar banned poppy
growing.
"Lenders never show any mercy," he said.
The local farmers are quoted by Newsweek as saying more than one debtor
has been bound hand and foot, then locked into a small windowless room
with a smoldering fire, slowly choking to death.
While law enforcers predict yet another record opium harvest in
Afghanistan this spring, the magazine says most farmers are struggling
to survive.
An estimated 500,000 Afghan families support themselves by raising
poppies, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
Last year, those growers received an estimated USD one billion for their
cropsabout USD 2,000 per household.
With at least six members in the average family, opium growers' per
capita income is roughly USD 300.
The real profits go to the traffickers, their Taliban allies and the
crooked officials who help them operate.
