Painful Payment for Afghan Debt: A Daughter, 6
As the shadows lengthened around her family’s hut here in one of Kabul’s sprawling refugee camps, a slight 6-year-old girl ran in to where her father huddled with a group of elders near a rusty wood stove. Her father, Taj Mohammad, looked away, his face glum.
“She does not know what is going to happen,” he said softly.
Fortunately, there was the postscript regarding the loan and the fate of the child:
After the publication of this article, the father who had agreed to give his daughter as payment for a debt called The New York Times and said the debt had been paid nearly a month ago by an anonymous donor.
The father, Taj Mohammad, and an American lawyer working with the donor confirmed that the debt had been paid early in March, more than a month after The Times began reporting on the case. Mr. Mohammad, for reasons that remained unclear and despite numerous conversations with reporters since then, did not tell The Times about it until after Monday’s article.
As recently as in a telephone interview on Friday, when he was asked about any developments in the case, he did not mention the donation. Asked on Monday why he had not said anything about it, he gave no direct answer.
An article updating the case has been posted online.
But...this was one case. Perhaps Naghma will not be essentially given as collateral on a loan, for now. But what happens if the family's status worsens? And for every case where there is a happy ending, there are many more women and girls in a similar situation. What of the others like Naghma? And despite the fact that child marriage and selling of girls and women is illegal in Afghanistan, precious little is done to stop it. So horrible.
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