Paying off a debt with a daughter June 21, 2008 - BBC
The ban on poppy farming in Afghanistan may hamper the heroin trade but it also leaves farmers in poverty. Kate Clark meets one who has had to negotiate the betrothal of his six-year-old daughter to pay a debt.
Jalalabad, near the junction of the Kabul and Kunar rivers, is a green city, shaded by citrus and pine trees.
In spring, the air is sweet with the fragrance of orange blossom.
Farmers who live nearby on the well-watered land are weathering the government ban on opium poppy.
Further away in the mountainous, outlying districts, the ban is hitting home hard.
The ban has made the province restive, too dangerous for me to travel through.
Growing poverty
So with a heavy heart, because I would much rather get out to the villages and sit on the floor, talking to people over tea, I have arranged for farmers to travel in to Jalalabad to see me.
Three times since 2000, a ban on poppy growing has been enforced in Nangarhar province. Cultivation has always bounced back.
But each time, the poorest farmers were left poorer and less able to cope.
One man, Juma Khan [not his real name] has come down from his village in the mountains on the Pakistan border.
Turbaned, with a white beard and a deeply lined face, he looks old enough to be a grandfather.
Selling his daughter
But he has just agreed to hand over his six-year-old daughter to pay off a debt. She is now engaged to the creditor's son.
In a country without banks, opium is the standard way to get a loan.
You borrow opium and pay back with opium.
While Juma Khan was growing poppies, he could pay off the interest on the debt, although never the capital.
The ban means he is having to grow low-value wheat.
This year, he will not even be able to feed his family.
And because he is landless, his only asset is his female children.
He has already exchanged two daughters for debt and now the youngest has wiped off a further £1,000 ($2,000) worth, a huge amount of money in rural Afghanistan.
A father here gets paid by the family of the groom, so payment of money is normal at a marriage.
Heroin trade
The shame for Juma Khan is that he has been forced to marry off his daughter.
Weaning Afghanistan off poppy cultivation must be good, you would think.
Afghan opium, processed into heroin, causes the deaths of tens of thousands of people around the world each year.
It is funding the Taleban insurgency and feeding government corruption.
Afghans usually recognise that it is a haram crop, forbidden in Islam, but if your family is facing hunger, they say, even haram crops become acceptable.
Low risk crop
And here, the poppy has always been regarded as wonderful.
In a high risk environment, it is a low risk crop.
It suits the dry climate. And even when there is war, there is always a market for opium.
And if you grow poppies, you can always get credit.
The farmers range from big landowners to subsistence peasants.
The really big profits, though, go to the traffickers, the corrupt officials, and in the south, to the Taleban who take a religious tax on the harvest.
'Better than aid'
Even so, there is a real trickle down of cash.
Poppy is a labour intensive crop, so even landless labourers get some small share of the profits.
It is more effective than aid at reaching the poor, one development worker told me.
This year in Nangarhar, growing poppies is not an option.
In Juma Khan's district, farmers have been arrested for breaking the ban.
It has become very tough for many families.
Tribal threats
Some men spoke about joining the Taleban to make money, they pay their fighters £70 ($140) a month, or the Afghan National Army who pay rather less.
Many farmers literally do not know how they are going to feed their families.
They are feeling angry and betrayed. They said the government had promised aid to help them through the ban, but they have received nothing.
Some threatened to break the ban next year.
"Our tribe is the Khogiani," said one farmer, "and we're brave like lions, a big tribe, living on the border with Pakistan."
"The government should look after poor families," he said.
And they should watch out. Afghan kings have been brought down by the tribes of Nangarhar.
But the man whose small daughter is now engaged, looks exhausted. His fighting days are long gone.
He went into debt during the jihad against the invading Soviet army, 30 years ago.
Since then, he has never managed to pay back the capital.
No shame
Did he not feel any shame, I asked, about marrying off his six-year-old?
No, he said, the real shame would have been to have his creditors knocking at his door, embarrassing him in front of the village.
Your daughter, I persisted, how does she feel?
"Oh, she's happy to be solving her father's problems," he said.
He cannot stay for long. He needs to get back home to water his fields.
The wheat crop, he said, even though it will only be enough to feed his family for a couple of months, cannot be neglected.
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Whoring out your 6 year old is disgusting vile cruel, but what do you expect with that culture. I would murder and steal before i would ever prostitute any woman in my life. "Did he not feel any shame, I asked, about marrying off his six-year-old?
No, he said, the real shame would have been to have his creditors knocking at his door, embarrassing him in front of the village." They have always done this kinda of shit, they have no respect for women. Scumbags
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she is such an object
what if we traded women in the United States, that would be great. Women currency.
people treat objects like women man - got that from The Dude.
-------------------- "If we could sniff or swallow something that would, for five or six hours each day, abolish our solitude as individuals, atone us with our fellows in a glowing exaltation of affection and make life in all its aspects seem not only worth living, but divinely beautiful and significant, and if this heavenly, world-transfiguring drug were of such a kind that we could wake up next morning with a clear head and an undamaged constitution - then, it seems to me, all our problems (and not merely the one small problem of discovering a novel pleasure) would be wholly solved and earth would become paradise." - Aldous Huxley GIVE ME OPIATES OR GIVE ME DEATH
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