Girls are denied education. Then forced into marriage.
By Shuhab Aryaee*
Shuhra* was in the eighth grade in Faizabad city, the capital of Badakhshan province, when the Taliban banned girls from attending school beyond the sixth grade. In February 2023, her father forced her into marriage. Shuhra, 15, recounts, “When I heard that my uncle wanted to propose to me for his son, I went to my father and begged him with tears in my eyes not to accept and let me continue my studies and find my way to university. But my father, with a stern and angry tone, said that girls’ education and going to university would remain a dream, and schools and universities would never reopen for you.” Nine months later, Shuhra is so unhappy with her marriage to a man she doesn’t like that she cries in solitude.
Shuhra isn’t the only girl forced into early marriages in the two years since the Taliban ended their education. Zan Times interviews with local sources reveal that 87 female students no longer allowed to attend the Halima Sadiya School in Badakhshan were forced into marriage during the year ending in August (no official or reliable statistics exist, as there are no women’s human rights organizations left in the country).
A staff member of the school has kept in contact with the female students forced into marriage. “I have received wedding invitations from some of them,” she tells Zan Times anonymously. “I send messages to some, and some still call me and cry, saying that if schools do not reopen, they will be married off.” The school official says that none of the girls forced into early marriages are of legal age of 18: “Imagine, from just one school, which has fewer students compared to other schools, this many girls have been married off.” She believes that a proper investigation would likely show the extent of the tragedy. She believes that hundreds, perhaps thousands of underage girls have been forcibly married in the province.
One of the students whom Zan Times contacted was forced to marry in August 2022. She now lives in a village in the province’s Baharistan district. “Apart from school, I had no other occupation, and even private educational centers were closed to us. For this reason, they married me off,” Farahnaz* explains.
She was in the seventh grade when she married into a religious family, where things like owning a television are considered a sin, and it’s a crime for women to be seen talking on the phone. Now, her hope of becoming a doctor has been replaced by the reality of being forced to play the ideal wife role for her husband and a full-time servant for his family. (Due to security concerns and the sensitivities of traditional society, Farahnaz, 13, was interviewed via WhatsApp messages so her husband’s family didn’t find out that she was speaking with a journalist.)
Maashoqa* is another teenager in Badakhshan forced into a marriage after the Taliban ended her academic aspirations. If the regime hadn’t closed schools to girls and denied them the right to participate in the Kankor [university entrance] exam, Maashoqa would have been a university student this year. Instead, a year after the Taliban closed schools to teenage girls, her parents decided that the ban was irreversible and thus they shouldn’t refuse proposals from suitors wanting to marry her, Maashoqa tells Zan Times. “When the suitor came, my family quickly agreed; they didn’t care about what I wanted,” she says. In April 2023, Maashoqa, 17, married an illiterate man who is 10 years older than his wife. Now, she is three months pregnant.
Maashoqa dreamed of becoming a teacher in her rural community, helping children who lacked access to education. Now, it is Maashoqa who is deprived of learning. And she isn’t alone. Of her class of 36, at least eight of her classmates, some who are younger than her, have also been forced into marriage without their consent. She shows Zan Times pictures of her classmates, some who are no older than 14 or 15 years old and who have been pushed into the arms of men much older than themselves due to the domination of the Taliban. “These days when we talk to each other, I see that each of our fates is more bitter than the others,” she says.
Lana Nusseibeh, the United Arab Emirates’ representative at the United Nations, estimates that more than 80,000 girls have been forced into marriage. During a special meeting of the United Nations Security Council on September 26, 2023, she explained that the economic crisis in Afghanistan has worsened the situation of women, making it the worst “women’s rights crisis in the world,” as families are desperately marrying their underage daughters for money.
In response, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid dismissed concerns about the rights of girls and women saying that discussions and opinions in the United Nations only deviated from Taliban edicts on two minor and internal issues, specifically women’s education and employment.
What Taliban officials consider to be minor issues have changed the life paths of most female students in Afghanistan. Shuhra can’t stop tears from flowing down her face every time she passes her old school: “My throat fills with bitterness, and I cry. If I were going to school and studying, I would plan for the future, but now I am at the mercy of others.”
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees and writer. Shuhab Aryaee is the pseudonym of a journalist in Afghanistan.
