By Ziba Balkhi
Please note: This story discusses sensitive details around suicide. If you are in Afghanistan and thinking about suicide, please talk to someone you trust or call the helpline at 119.
It was a regular summer morning in June in the northern province of Faryab. Farzana* had finished some house cleaning when she returned to the room she shared with her younger sister Marina*.
Marina had been struggling with low spirits for days and had been especially sorrowful the night before, so Farzana went to check on her.
“I tried to wake her up and called her name twice. I got closer and shook her firmly, but still, there was no response,” the 25-year-old said.
“Her whole body was cold and limp, and her complexion had turned pale. I got scared and screamed.”
Months later, recounting the moment she found Marina’s lifeless body and rushing her to hospital in the hope of saving her was extremely difficult for Farzana to share. She had known how devastated Marina was about her impending forced marriage, but she never suspected her sister would take her own life.
“In the last two days of her life, she had changed a lot,” Farzana said. “She was telling me, our mother, and my little sister that she loved us very much. She told us ‘If I become distant from you, don’t be heartbroken,’ We thought she meant that when she got married and moved away, we shouldn’t be upset.”
“I wish I had understood the meaning of her words and had stopped her. She left forever, leaving us behind.”
Farzana said her 22-year-old sister’s repeated protests against marriage were ignored by their father. He had accepted the marriage proposal for Marina from a man 15 years older, who already had two other wives, in exchange for 600,000 afghanis (US$8,000).
“The day they were officially engaged, Marina cried a lot. She told me to do whatever I could to prevent her from marrying this man, but there was nothing I could do,” Farzana said.
“My father didn’t care about what we said or even what my mother said. The only thing that mattered was his own opinion. My father told us that if he didn’t accept this marriage proposal, his friendship [with the man] would be ruined.”
Just over a year later, one week after the official marriage date was set, Marina was dead.
Undocumented deaths
There are no official records available of the number of Afghan girls and women who resort to suicide, but anecdotally, the reports of these occurrences are rising.
UK newspaper The Guardian has reported the Taliban as the de facto authority in Afghanistan has prevented health workers from publicly disclosing suicide statistics.
Human rights groups including the United Nations and independent assessments from the Human Rights Council have confirmed the rates are rising.
Rukhshana Media has also published numerous reports on the matter including talking to families about the sharp increase in severe mental distress among girls.
From 22 October to 20 December 2024, there were five confirmed suicides of women and girls in Faryab alone. These happened in the Gorziwan, Pashtunkot, and Bilchiragh districts with forced marriages and domestic violence cited as the main triggers.
A Faryab-based women’s rights activist Nagina Ahmadi* said that this is only a small portion of the real number happening in her province, with some families hiding the cause of death out of shame.
“In Faryab and several other provinces, unfortunately many women have either committed suicide or are contemplating it. Sadly, women in remote provinces like Faryab are more likely to take such drastic measures because, in these areas, women have no right to choose. If they show even the slightest resistance to a family decision, they are labeled with derogatory terms,” she said.
There is also no support and no escape for girls and women dealing with these abuses or extraordinary pressures.
“Women’s cases are not properly addressed in the courts. There are no safe houses where vulnerable women can go. There are no institutions to support women or address their issues,” Ms Ahmadi said.
“The Human Rights Commission and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs were dissolved by the Taliban after the group took control. This is why many girls see suicide as their only way out of their problems.”
Shame heaped upon grief
Marina’s act of taking her own life has been shunned and shamed even in her burial, Farzana said.
“The clerics said she had committed suicide, and suicide is forbidden in Islam. Anyone who commits suicide will not have a funeral prayer. So they buried my unfortunate sister without a funeral prayer,” she said.
Farzana herself faces a forced marriage. She is engaged to a cousin against her will.
“We are forced to accept their decision. If we don’t, what’s the alternative? Who will hear our voices and help us? I was engaged to my cousin without my consent and had to accept my father’s decision. We have no right to choose,” she said.
Farzana remembered her father’s firm response to her late sister’s pleas for a way out of the marriage.
“He would say, ‘The man is good, he’s wealthy, what’s the issue if he has two other wives? A man has the right to four wives’,” she said, adding that her father said he wanted to use the dowry to build a house and then marry off his son.
“Most of the people of Faryab don’t care about their daughters – they only think of their own benefit, that’s it. Here, a daughter is of little value.”
Farzana cried as she remembered how Marina had given warnings about her intention to end her life, but they were not taken seriously.
She held a picture of Marina, gently touching it, saying her sister no longer had the strength to fight such an unjust life.
Filled with tears, Farzana shared that last night she spent with her sister.
“The night before, she asked me to sleep next to her and hugged me. We talked until late,” she said.
“She was sharing her dissatisfaction, saying she wasn’t happy about marrying her fiancé and didn’t want to live with him. She complained about our father and expressed how much she loved me and our mother.
“I tried to console her, but she said she didn’t want to marry a man who was much older and already had a wife. We talked like this until we fell asleep.”
*Names have been changed for security reasons.
Some details in this report, such as the exact location have not been shared for security reasons. The cause of death has been omitted to avoid promoting harmful behavior.