Afghan Girls’ Burnt Future (Burning Themselves To Escape Marriage)
As a little girl way back some 30 yrs ago, I came across the term Afghan through our little way of helping our parents in earning a living. As a 9 years old girl I used to earn some penny by engaging in our village some sort of a livelihood project which is crocheting. Adults, young ladies and even little girls like us were encouraged to learn and used this opportunity to get some money that might help us buy some necessities. As a young kid, I’ve learned to do this stuff not only of necessity but because a lot of people were doing it and it was some kind of making your self “belong” to people. By the way, the term Afghan was referred to the crocheted mattress that we were making which I believe were for export to Afghanistan.
Afghan girls burn themselves to escape marriage: This caption has somehow caught my attention. Reports says that where the tradition of child or forced marriages runs strong it is also where girls and young women between the ages 13 and 25, often from poor, uneducated backgrounds are the most likely to practice “self-immolation”. The practice comes from Iran, where many Afghan refugees had fled to during war with the Soviet Union from 1979 through 1989. And the practice of self-immolation has been so popular and spread among Afghan women especially among the poor and uneducated.
Dr. Mohamed Aref Jalali, the director of the burns unit in Herat Hospital said that the reason behind all these is forced marriage, wherein young girls below 16 are already force to marry. According to some source arranged marriage is very rampant for economic reasons. Parents often force their girls to marry at a very young age, to marry even a man with more than 2 to 3 decades older for security reasons. Parents of these “poor” girls opt in this activity thinking that the future of their girls are already secured and had put them in a safer and convenient life. Not fully aware of the lifelong consequence of their “ignorant decision” and the destruction of their kids’ life through brutal treatment that they might be going through.
It is because of these domestic violence being done not only by the husband but by the whole members of the family, it is because of these unforgivable words and deeds that made these girls succumb into this horrible self-immolation practice. Domestic violence is prevalent because this rude people believe that wives from forced and arranged marriages were there “only to wash, to clean, to give baby … and nothing more”. Sacrificing the pain of the mortal body and agony of the spirit to escape such tragedy that parents themselves had done. To these poor girls who’d suffered this fate life is almost synonymous to death. When hopelessness had entered their whole being and living means dying then committing suicide is an easy thing.
