For some people, the stories of torture, misogyny, rape, violence, and murder, is just another reason to leave Afghanistan. For me, it’s another reason to stay, and help those girls who believe in better lives for themselves.
Take the two Afghan girls in the following New York Times story, ages 13 and 14, who had fled for two days along poor roads and mountain passes to escape their pedophile husbands. They were captured by a policeman, and returned to the village where they were publicly flogged for running away from their rapists.
It’s amazing. They know how to use a digital video recorder, but they can’t bring their thinking anywhere near this century. What’s inspiring is not only did these girls run away, but they took the public beating without shame, and walked away afterward with their heads “unbowed”:
The ordeal of Afghanistan’s child brides illustrates an uncomfortable truth. What in most countries would be considered a criminal offense is in many parts of Afghanistan a cultural norm, one which the government has been either unable or unwilling to challenge effectively.
According to a Unicef study, from 2000 to 2008, the brides in 43 percent of Afghan marriages were under 18. Although the Afghan Constitution forbids the marriage of girls under the age of 16, tribal customs often condone marriage once puberty is reached, or even earlier.
[...]
Forced into a so-called marriage exchange, where each girl was given to an elderly man in the other’s family, Khadija and Basgol later complained that their husbands beat them when they tried to resist consummating the unions. Dressed as boys, they escaped and got as far as western Herat Province, where their bus was stopped at a checkpoint and they were arrested.
Fighting back while being raped? How very un-Islamic of them.
The Afghan government has to know that such incidents are cancerous for western support for the mission. The last thing people want to be seen doing is supporting a culture that marries off children to old men.
Unfortunately, in many cases the girls are “married” off because Mullahs buy them from poor families, who then have one less mouth to feed. There are other stories much worse than just being threatened with forced marriage and rape :
Sumbol, 17, a Pashtun girl, said she was kidnapped and taken to Jalalabad, then given a choice: marry her tormentor, or become a suicide bomber. “He said, ‘If you don’t marry me I will put a bomb on your body and send you to the police station,’ ” Sumbol said.
[...] H/T to Adrian MacNair [...]
you know i feel sorry for these girls, i really do. but if these people are truly that backward why dont we just leave them all there to rot, bomb it occasionally when something bad happens here and be done with it. that country is F’in hopeless.
how is it that we think we can change hundreds of years of perverse ideology in one decade. to hell with the middleast.
Oddly enough I saw Dr.Sheema Khan now on TVO pretending to be a Moderate Muslim that opposed Shariah law in canada.She fooled the guest that “a small number of people wanted Shariah because The-Joooo’s had special Courts on family matters”.
Sorry Con-Job Khan, you and Muhammad Elmasry were the Crusaders for Shariah law in canada while you were at CAIR that is now linked to funding Hamas via the USA CAIR ( Nihad Awad) charity you first said NO link to CAIR-Can.
I still have her video from the Arar Inquiry because I knew she spewed falsehoods to Justice O’Connor over the rampant Islamophobia in Canada and Racial-Profiling towards Muslims.
Muslims are NOT a race,and you Ms.Khan exalted Muhammad’s life as a puppet for your saudi masters,you defended the Toronto 18 and now denouce them as Misunderstanders of the true islam,CAIR defended Momin Khawaja and the Khadr family.
It’s pretty rich for you to now try to detatch yourself from the Islamofascist rants and America bashing while you went to Harvard for a Phd,you bash Israel when you know your Muslim Sister Irshad manji would be murdered in pulic if stepping in Gaza and hamas finding her.
Why she even repeated the big lie that Arar was Deported to Syria for Torture,CAIR USA pulled their CTV.ca Video from the web site where Nihad Awad boasted of supporting maher arar back when he had a 2nd home near a Radical Boston Mosque and near the same Airport used by the 9/11 hijackers.
The CBC is sure to spin the recent floatilia-Massacre as 1000′s of aids infected cancer stricken Orphans going for Chemo-therapy in Gaza. But since the CBC didn’t have Ms.Khan on to push her new book,maybe they got burned too many times when CAIR and the Arar’s flip-flopped their stories after a Court threw out his $25 million lawsuit against Jordan for his alleged Torture in their Country.
I think it’s time to edit those tapes and post the evidence for Khan misleading the Inquiry and defending the Muslims who scouted a Nuclear plant and took flying lessons near it while also scounting the cool-water intake ducts.
Poor Ms.Khan,the same media used to bash canada and Israel will come back top bite her as the evidence for overt falsehoods that bordered on treason as she admits CAIR coaches Muslims to not help the RCMP expose plot to murder us Infidels.
I knew that gut feeling to buy the CPAC video tapes would pay off, and since canada is strick on Libel or Copy rights,an American already has a copy i made to DVD and used the Transcripts from the inquiry to download her statements put on record.
Oh the irony.
It may be very un-PC to say this, but I think it was a serious, perhaps fatal mistake to allow either Afghanistan or Iraq to write their own constitutions after their previous regimes were toppled. The provisions in their constitutions that give supremacy to Islamic beliefs and provisions will ensure that perpetually backward, even outright evil societal norms like this will never be addressed nor banished.
Japan was not allowed to keep their pre-1945 beliefs (is there a single word that describes those?). Germany was not allowed to keep Naziism. In the same vein, Iraq & Afghanistan should not have been allowed to keep Islam as any part of their systems of government.
I have a question for you Adrian. In the last couple of years I have worked with 2 children who are refugees from Afghanistan. 1 boy and 1 girl. Both were sexually abused, both witnessed family members murdered, and both lost their fathers before coming here (and in both cases father was violent and abusive).
Both kids have committed crimes of violence in Canada. In both cases psychologists have said their childhood has taught them to resolve issues through violence. The one who committed the worst crime has only offended once. The one who commits minor crimes (minor assaults) has offended numerois times.
Is it your position we should send them back?
What age are the children you are helping. And one does not need a psychologist to tell us that their childhood taught them to use violence. Common sense tells us all of those citizens believe in violence first.
And if one of them commits a terrorist act in Canada, yes, send him/her back.
Old enough to be charged, and no one said anything about terrorism.
I just said, IF, they commit a terrorist act, or attend protests and cause damage, send them back.
It is amazing how the libs/ndp posters are twisting words and facts on the blogs today.
I ask, because by bringing up terrorism, even though no one mentioned it, you have managed to avoid the question, which I am guessing was your goal.
Though I am interested in how I “twisted” your words…
Am also interested in you seem to think attending a protest or causing damage is just as bad as terrorism.
It would depend on the age, the severity of the crimes, and other factors. But yeah, I’d say that they’re kind of blowing an opportunity here. If they continue to use violence as a means of dealing with their problems, let’s see how they fare back in Afghanistan.
So how do they learn otherwise? I assume you support funding programming and counselling then?
I would support some form of counselling and integration classes. But you can’t reward a dog that bites the hand that feeds. No citizens should be put in jeopardy because of the trauma of their experiences.
You are still responsible for your own actions, no matter what people did to you in the past.
Aren’t solders citizens? It is OK for them to have their lives put in jeopardy fighting for Afghanistan, and yet you believe we should not provide a safe haven for them here because of a much smaller risk of loss of civilian life?
The reality is that if we are sending our troops over there to save these people, then maybe the troops should not be the only ones making the sacrifices. Maybe we should start putting more resources into actually helping these people by bringing them to our country and providing them with a safe haven. While it is all well and good to say they must behave themselves, if we are not prepared to put the resources into helping them adjust and deal with the trauma of their past, then this entire operation is a great big waste of money and lives.