Afghanistan condemns abuse of teenage bride
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.
“Let’s break the dead silence on women’s plight,” read the title of an editorial Wednesday in the Afghanistan Times.
Despite guaranteed rights and progressive new laws, Afghanistan still ranks as the world’s sixth-worst country for women’s equality in the U.N. Development Program’s annual Gender Inequality Index. Nevertheless, Afghan advocates say attitudes have subtly shifted over the years, in part thanks to the dozens of women’s groups that have sprung up.
Fawzia Kofi, a lawmaker and head of the women’s affairs commission in the Afghan parliament, says the outcry over a case like Gul’s probably would not have happened just a few years ago because of deep cultural taboos against airing private family conflicts and acknowledging sexual abuse — such as forcing a woman into prostitution.
“I think there is now a sense of awareness about women’s rights. People seem to be changing and seem to be talking about it,” Kofi said.
Ending abuse of women is a huge challenge in a patriarchal society where traditional practices include child marriage, giving girls away to settle debts or pay for their relatives’ crimes and so-called honor killings in which girls seen as disgracing their families are murdered by their relatives.