Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Friday, March 29th, 2024

Afghan Girls – The Victim of Violence

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Afghan Girls – The Victim of Violence

“The women in the long-term shelter try to cheat sleep by huddling together in the dark, their voices a way to ward off nightmares. The torments they endured at the hands of their families are written on their bodies. Knife scars traverse their faces and necks. Beatings with chains mark their backs. Some limp from broken bones that were never properly set. Several have faces eroded by acid, a favorite weapon here.

Daily life is an endless effort to escape the haunted precincts of memory; images of pummeling hands, the thumping sound of wood hitting their legs, of their bodies falling to the floor, the taste of blood in their mouths.”

According to a recent report, Gul Meena, a 16-year-old woman, survived a brutal attack by her brother after she fled an older husband, who had beaten her, and eloped with another man. She had been just 8 or 9 in her home in Kunar Province on the Pakistan border when a man in the next village offered money to her unemployed father for her.

In her innocence, she was thrilled to be given a white dress and makeup for the wedding ceremony. “I was thinking, this is the future, my husband would be buying me new clothes every day,” she is quoted to say. In the car on the bumpy ride to her new home she remembers addressing her new husband as “uncle.”

“Uncle, please take care of me. I’m afraid I will fall,” she said as she bounced on his knee in the car.

From the moment she arrived in his house, she was a servant. The only grace was that he was not allowed to have sex with her before she had her first period. Two years after they wed, the moment came and he forced himself on her. “I was like a thing and they sold me,” she said. “He was beating me with everything near to him. With his glasses, with his mobile phone, with wood, with stones, and with his hands.”

Lonely and bewildered, she tried at least twice to return to her father’s house, but the family sent her back to her husband and finally she went to a neighbor’s home. The husband of the family ran away with her to Nangarhar Province in eastern Afghanistan.

When her brother caught up with them, he slit the man’s throat and slashed Gul Meena 15 times with an ax, nearly blinding her and leaving her for dead. When she woke up in the hospital, she looked in the mirror. “I was very damaged,” she said. “Before, I was beautiful and young.”

Although she does not see herself that way, she is still a stunning young woman. She has never gone to school but speaks with a simple eloquence. Now she fears that she is ugly and no one will marry her. “Men are always interested in the beauty of a woman,” she said. “They are never interested in the heart.”

In the patriarchal society of Afghanistan, women are the inveterate victim of violence. They suffer fractious attitudes, honor killings, physical tortures, etc. in one way or another. Women confront unsavory problems in their domestic and social life. The connubial strife, forced marriage, restrictive measures, which root in tradition and stereotypical frames of mind, and so on galvanize Afghan girls and women to seek sojourn in shelters – founded by Western financial aids.

However, taking refuge in shelter, which is against Afghan culture and moral values, provoke anger from parents and family members. A girl, who seeks haven in Western-founded shelters, will be deemed to have besmirched her parents’ character and violated the cultural taboo. Hence, since her family members pursue her like a shadow, her freedom will be curtailed and her life in great jeopardy. She would live a worrisome life – fraught with terrible nightmares of hirsute killer stabbing her to death – and unable to breathe a sigh of relief. To put it succinctly, her life would change into burning hell. Those who are caught or wheedled to return home are killed in a fit of pique for being considered a scandal to her family.

Women’s social life is also threatened by Taliban militants. For instance, in the Taliban-dominated areas, the girls’ schools are razed to the ground and they are threatened to death in case of attending schools. Moreover, women are urged to come out with especial clothing – they mostly present in public with burqa.

Additionally, the women involved in political issues have to be highly wary of their life-safety. A number of Afghan women representatives survived terrorist acts and some lost their family members in ambushes. According to Taliban’s ideology, women are born to live within the four walls of domestic life, engaged with household chores. Going into politics will be construed as violating religious taboos. As if women are born merely to satiate men’s carnal desires and to be fully subjugated to them – it is what the religious fundamentalists believe.

Ill-fatedly, women are yet considered inferior by the traditional frames of mind. Some innocent girls are sold in exchange for money – despite their strong sense of antipathy towards this business. Succumbing to a large amount of money, fathers coerce their daughters into marrying old men. In such a case, the girls either have to yield to their fathers’ order or choose to elope or take refuge to the shelters. So, to preclude girls from eloping or seeking haven to shelters, parents have to stop imposing their ideas on their daughters and give up treating her cruelly. 

Hujjatullah Zia is a permanent writer of Daily Outlook Afghanistan. He can be reached at zia_hujjat@yahoo.com

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