Afghan Bride's torturers get 10 years

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Just 15 years old, Sahar Gul has become the bruised and bloodied face of women's rights in Afghanistan. The teenage bride's eyes were swollen nearly shut as she was wheeled into the hospital seven months after her arranged marriage. Black scabs crusted her fingertips where her nails used to be.

According to officials in northeastern Baghlan province, Gul's in-laws kept her in a basement for six months, ripped her fingernails out, tortured her with hot irons and broke her fingers — all in an attempt to force her into prostitution. Police freed her after her uncle called authorities.

The horrific images, captured by television news cameras last week, transfixed Afghanistan and set off a storm of condemnation. President Hamid Karzai set up a commission to investigate, and his health minister visited her bedside. Police arrested her in-laws, who denied abusing her. A warrant was issued for her husband, who serves in the Afghan army.

The case highlights both the problems and the progress of women 10 years after the Taliban's fall. Gul's egregious wounds and underage wedlock are a reminder that girls and women still suffer shocking abuse. But the public outrage and the government's response to it also show that the country is slowly changing.

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In this Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2011 file photo, 15-year-old Sahar Gul, is wheeled into a hospital in Baghlan north of Kabul, Afghanistan. According to officials in northeastern Baghlan province,Horrific images of Sahar, bruised and bloodied, captured on video, transfixed Afghanistan and set off a storm of condemnation. President Hamid Karzai set up a commission to investigate, and his health minister visited her bedside at a Kabul hospital. The in-laws have been arrested _ they deny abusing her _ and a warrant has been issued for her husband, who serves in the Afghan army. Photo: Jawed Basharat / AP

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Seven months ago, 14-year-old Sahar Gul was given in marriage to a 30-year-old man. After not being able to see their daughter for several months, Sahar’s parents contacted local police. Last month, police rescued the teenager, badly beaten and starving, from a dark, windowless basement room in her in-laws’ home after neighbors reported hearing the girl crying and moaning in pain.
According to reports from multiple Afghan authorities, Sahar’s in-laws had locked her in a toilet after she resisted their efforts to force her into prostitution to earn money for them. Director of the Women’s Affairs Department in Baghlan, Rahima Zarifi, told MSNBC World News that Sahar had been severely tortured, physically and mentally. Police told the BBC that Sahar’s nails and clumps of her hair had been pulled out, and chunks of her flesh were cut out with pliers. Officials in Baghlan province told MSNBC that Sahar’s in-laws kept her in a basement for six months, tortured her with hot irons and broke her fingers. A week after her rescue, Sahar was reportedly still covered in scars and bruises, with one eye still swollen shut. Sahar is receiving medical care and treatment in a Kabul hospital.
A special 10-man police unit has been set up to hunt for Sahar’s husband and others behind her torture, Afghan officials told the BBC. Although Sahar’s mother-in-law, sister-in-law and father-in-law have been arrested, her husband, Ghulam Sakhi, has managed to elude authorities. An interior ministry spokesman told BBC News, “This is incredibly serious and not acceptable and all those responsible will be brought in to make an example to others.” Baghlan governor, Munshi Abdul Majid, told The New York Times, “This is an un-Islamic and inhuman act.”

Opium Flowers" The Child Brides of Afghanistan

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Tragic.

Khalida's father says she's 9—or 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................

Eradication efforts aren't the only thing pushing opium marriages. Poppy acreage is expanding in Helmand province, but loan brides are common there, too, says Bashir Ahmad Nadim, a local journalist. He says moneylenders in Helmand are always looking for "opium flowers"— marriageable daughters ready for plucking if crop failure or family emergency forces a borrower into default. In the south's drug-fueled economy, fathers of opium brides often get hefty cash bonuses on top of having their debts forgiven.

12 year old marries an 82 year old man.......
There are plenty of love stories like these coming out of Faisalbad. A 12 year old girl was sold off in marriage to an 82 year old man, whose third wife he had murdered by the girl’s father. The father got out of jail and got five acres of land, and a girl who in America would be going trick or treating ended up in a nightmare that her American counterparts could not even begin to imagine.
As the 82 year old landlord put it, he was “owed a wife” and it doesn’t much matter where you get the wife from. Since his murdered third wife had been a cousin of her murderer, it was all kept in the family. The only good news here is that he might be too arthritic to throw acid in her face.

 She is 12-years-old and that is not too young for marriage” Being an adult doesn’t mean that she can get married on her own, or drive a car or vote– it just means she’s eligible to be raped every night by an 82 year old man.

read more herehttp://jdlcanada.wordpress.com/2011/11/08/pakistan-isnt-just-over-there-its-here-jessie-bender-a-13-year-old-girl-ran-away-before-she-was-set-to-be-taken-to-pakistan-and-married-off-by-her-mothers-pakistani-boyfriend-how-many-ot/