Below The Beltway

As the United States engages in what is likely to be a years-long debate on gay marriage, the New York Times takes a look at what marriage means in one paricularly backward corner of the world. In this case, its Afganistan, where girls as young as 11 are married off to men old enough to be their fathers:

Rather than a willing union between a man and woman, marriage is frequently a transaction among families, and the younger the bride, the higher the price she may fetch. Girls are valuable workers in a land where survival is scratched from the grudging soil of a half-acre parcel. In her parents’ home, a girl can till fields, tend livestock and cook meals. In her husband’s home, she is more useful yet. She can have sex and bear children.

Afghanistan is not alone in this predilection toward early wedlock. Globally, the number of child brides is hard to tabulate; they live mostly in places where births, deaths and the human milestones in between go unrecorded. But there are estimates. About 1 in 7 girls in the developing world (excluding China) gets married before her 15th birthday, according to analyses done by the Population Council, an international research group.

Obviously, none of these girls is choosing to get married. But, they live in a culture where freedom to make your own decisions — like who you will marry and even when you will get married — is non-existent.

Some Afghans readily use their daughters to settle debts and assuage disputes. Polygamy is practiced. A man named Mohammed Fazal, 45, told Sinclair that village elders had urged him to take his second wife, 13-year-old Majabin, in lieu of money owed him by the girl’s father. The two men had been gambling at cards while also ingesting opium and hashish.

But the practice of early marriage stems as much from entrenched culture as from financial need. Bridal virginity is a matter of honor. Afghan men want to marry virgins, and parents prefer to yield their daughters before misbehavior or abduction has brought the family shame and made any wedding impossible.

And don’t think 13 is too young to get married in Afghanistan, apparently, its not:

On the day she witnessed the engagement party of 11-year-old Ghulam Haider to 40-year-old Faiz Mohammed, Sinclair discreetly took the girl aside. “What are you feeling today?” the photographer asked. “Nothing,” the bewildered girl answered. “I do not know this man. What am I supposed to feel?”

Good question.