By: Ellaha Rasa
Nine-year-old Hasiba was playing with her older sister one February evening when there was a knock at the family door. A man had come to collect her father’s debt. But Abdul Rahim didn’t have the money to repay it, so he traded Hasiba instead.
Her father incurred the debt two years earlier when Hasiba’s now 17-year-old brother was injured in a traffic accident and lost his sight. Abdul Rahim borrowed 180,000 afghanis, about US$2000 at the time, from one of his relatives for his son’s medical treatment, and has not been able to repay it.
“The creditor came and asked for the loan, but I had no money,” Abdul Rahim tells Rukhshana Media. “The creditor told me to give my daughter instead of the debt. So I paid with my daughter.”
Abdul Rahim had offered his 13-year-old daughter, but he says, because Hasiba was more beautiful, the creditor chose her. “My thirteen-year-old daughter is not married yet, and I suggested her to them, but the creditor’s wife refused. She told me, ‘Your daughter has a small nose and she is a shy girl. I want Hasiba for my son because she is beautiful and smart.’”
Abdul Rahim agreed to Hasiba’s marriage in exchange for more than 350,000 afghanis on one condition – that they wait until she is 12 years old. The man who Hasiba will marry is 20 years old and has gone to work in Iran, so his family agreed.
“We agreed on 350,000 afghanis. I told him that my daughter is young now, wait until she is old enough to make tea, wash dishes, bake a piece of bread and sweep the house,” Abdul Rahim says.
Hasiba’s mother, Shaima, says they don’t really have any other choice. “We have no money and can’t pay the creditor the money in this situation,” she says, adding that eventually girls marry anyway.
Hasiba is unaware that she had been traded to pay her father’s debt. She talks about her third-grade classes at school and her friends. Her father makes it clear she is not to be asked about her marriage. When asked what she wants to do when she’s older, Hasiba says she wants to be a doctor.
Under Afghanistan’s government before the Taliban takevover, Article 71 of the law stipulated a minimum legal age for girls to marry is 16 years old and for boys is 18 years. The law also permitted a father or a paternal grandfather to get permission from the court if they wanted their child to marry younger. Under Taliban rule, it’s unclear if there is any minimum age or if it would be enforced.
Since the Taliban’s takeover in August 2021, a severe drop in foreign aid from the international community and a struggling economy has seen more people plunged into unemployment and poverty. According to the United Nations, a devastating two-thirds of the country is struggling to meet its basic needs including food.
The financial pressure has more families forcing their young daughters into marriage for financial gain or paying off debts, like Abdul Rahim.
He lives with his wife and eight of their nine children in a mud-brick home with two rooms. The roof is a thick plastic sheet with several sticks holding it in place. He and Shaima have five daughters and four sons. Their eldest daughter is 19 years old and lives with her husband, who she married at 16.
Abdul Rahim says their difficulties really began before the debt. It started four years ago when they fled conflict in their home district, and became one of the thousands of internally displaced families within Afghanistan. They tried to restart their lives in the Shahrak-e-Sabz area of Herat’s Shaidayi region.
“When we were in Adraskan district, our life was good, I had land there. But because of the war between the Taliban forces and the security forces of the previous government, we left and came to Herat city,” he says.
Abdul Rahim had been a farmer and worked with livestock. Since moving to the city, he earns an income through shoemaking. He says he doesn’t make enough to cover even their daily expenses, let alone repay debts or afford unexpected costs. “My job is a shoemaker. I leave the house in the morning and come home empty-handed in the evening,” he says, adding that he doesn’t have a workshop – he works mostly outside. “In the winter, because the weather was too cold, I couldn’t work.”
In addition, Abdul Rahim says he has kidney stones that he cannot afford to treat and make it difficult for him to do heavy labor. Then two years ago, one winters day, he received the phonemail that would plunge them even further into financial stress – his 14-year-old son had been in a traffic accident. His son had been going to collect garbage to help the family, when he was hit by a car. He was thrown to the road, and a motorcycle struck his head.
“Those who injured my son fled from the scene of the incident. Witnesses took my son to the hospital,” he says. “As a result of the severe blow to his face, the edges of the eye socket were broken. There was a lot of pressure on his eyeballs.”
Abdul Rahim’s son needed surgery, but there was a delay of 12 days, which Abdul Rahim believes led to his son losing his sight. “My son’s nerves lost function after the accident,” he says. “He cannot work and he does not behave properly with his mother and sisters at home.”
The eye operation was done in Herat’s regional hospital and he spent 12 days in a coma. Abdul Rahim had to borrow the money for the cost of X-rays, medicine, and other expenses such as the cost of an artificial eye. “We had nothing to treat him and after his eye was implanted,” he says. “He completely the light in one eye, but there was nothing I could do for my son.”
Abdul Rahim also says that their house is so freezing in winter that one of their children died when he was six weeks old. “My baby son, Ehsanullah, froze due to the cold after it snowed in Herat,” he says. “But I didn’t have the money and facilities to take him to the hospital and he died in the cold.”
Herat’s Department of Refugees and Repatriation registered 28 people as having died due to cold between December 22 and January 20.
Abdul Rahim says he has received some food aid from the World Food Programme – a once-off package for the winter season. But it’s not enough. “Last night we had no fuel for the fire and we slept in the freezing cold,” he adds.
He says he feels stuck in a cycle of helplessness and poverty, and now also feels terrible guilt. There has been no relief that the debt of his son’s medical fees has been paid. “Day and night I am thinking the same thing – I made a big mistake when I answered yes [to give Hasiba to the creditor],” he says. “God knows that I did not want to do this at all.”
