Taliban Stop Child Marriage, Says Bride Must Be 9-Year-Old

A six-year-old girl has allegedly been forced to marry a 45-year-old man in Afghanistan after she was given away for money.

The haunting photo of an older man and a little girl standing together horrified even the Taliban, who intervened with the union.

The youngster had allegedly been exchanged by her father for money to a man who already has two wives, it was reported by Amu.tv.

The marriage was allegedly set to take place on Friday in Helmand province but the Taliban stepped in and arrested both men involved.

No charges were brought against them but they have forced the creep to wait until the girl is nine before he can take her home, local media said.

UN Women reported last year that there has been a 25 per cent rise in child marriages in Afghanistan after the Taliban banned girls' education in 2021. They also said there has been a 45 per cent increase in child bearing across the country.

In the same year as the Taliban came to power, after the US' heavily criticised exit, a nine-year-old girl who was sold by her father to a 55-year-old man as a child bride was rescued by a charity.

Parwana Malik was sold for the equivalent of £1,600 in land, sheep and cash to a stranger named Qorban so her father Abdul Malik could pay for food.

The little girl had cried day and night before her sale, begging her father instead to go to school to become a doctor.

Parwana's buyer Qorban said at the time of his deal it was his 'second marriage' and insisted he would treat her well.

Her father Abdul said he was 'broken' with guilt at the sale of his daughter and was unable to sleep at night.

Only months before had Parwana's 12-year-old sister been sold to help the family survive.

A US-based charity, Too Young to Wed, helped free the girl from the barbaric arrangement and her siblings and mother were moved from their camp to a safe house in Herat - the first time they had even been in a real home after living in tents.

The horrific deal drew international outrage at the time with all 24 then-female senators in the US pushing President Joe Biden to take action to prevent child marriages in Afghanistan.

Young boys have also fallen victim to the brutalities of the Taliban government, with many sexually exploited by older men and turned into sex slaves for the elite.

Under the barbaric tradition of the 'Bacha Bazi', young boys and adolescents are adorned in makeup, dressed in brightly coloured women's clothing and sent before groups of powerful men to dance and entertain.

Bacha Bazi, whose name translates to 'boy play', has persisted for centuries and, while Afghanistan's current Taliban leadership claim to oppose it, the practice continues as an open secret.

A report released in November detailed how boys remain at high risk of commercial sexual exploitation through Bacha Bazi and 'are frequently underreported due to stigma and fear, particularly when perpetrators are police'.

'Despite the Taliban’s public stance against the practice, reports suggest it remains prevalent and largely unaddressed,' the UK government report said.

Survivors who have escaped speak of beatings, rape, and psychological torment, only to be cast out once they grow facial hair and are no longer considered desirable.

Many turn to prostitution, drug addiction, or suicide, unable to escape the trauma they have endured.

Though some boys reportedly volunteer, many are sold into this life by their own impoverished families desperate to get by.

Others are quite simply abducted, including by police officers - the very people supposed to prevent Bacha Bazi from resurging.

Photographs and videos that have surfaced online show boys at these gatherings, forced to perform in front of groups of men who later pass them around as objects of pleasure.

Once young boys are sold by their families or abducted, many are harangued into harems and flogged by pimps and traffickers.

Some boys are kept effectively as personal property, with their owners wary of allowing other men to see the children for fear they would try to steal them away. Others, however, are traded willingly as a commodity.

It is widely believed that every military commander has had a young companion as part of a sick game.

In 2015, a New York Times investigation revealed that child rape by government-affiliated Afghan commanders was so common that it became an open secret among US troops.

But the Taliban's own morality police - the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice - focus almost exclusively on policing women's behaviour, while crimes like Bacha Bazi continue in the shadows.

The repeated crackdown on women's rights has snowballed in recent years, with girls banned from primary school, effectively denying all women from education across Afghanistan after it was made forbidden for them to attend secondary or higher education.

The extremist government also said women could no longer teach, visit mosques, attend seminaries, funfairs, parks and gyms in a crackdown on women's rights.

According to the UN, more than 70 decrees, directives, statements, and systematised practices have targeted what women can and can't do.

There has been a reported rise in female suicides and UNICEF said the education ban will create harrowing repercussions for generations to come.

'With fewer girls receiving an education, girls face a higher risk of child marriage with negative repercussions on their well-being and health,' the United Nations agency for children said.

More than four million girls will be out of education if the ban continues until 2025.

Most recently, women have been banned from speaking loudly in their own homes, and are not allowed to be heard outside, in the Taliban's latest bid to control and subjugate an entire gender.

Any woman who dares to break the new rules will be arrested and sent to prison, the terror group said.

Women are also ordered to cover their faces 'to avoid temptation and tempting others', and are banned from speaking if unfamiliar men who aren't husbands or close relatives, are present.

The UN reported that nearly one in five women said they hadn't spoken to another woman outside of their immediate family in three months.

Malala Yousafzai has since urged the world to do more to help women and girls who are forced to live under the Taliban's 'gender apartheid' in Afghanistan.

'When we look at the scale of the oppression that Afghan women are facing, there is no legal term. There is no internationally recognised crime that can explain the intensity of it,' she told The Times.