An Afghan family showcased on CNN apparently selling their nine-year-old daughter to an older man in marriage told an Afghan media outlet in a report on Friday that the scene was staged and not depicting a child marriage contract.
“I didn’t sell her into marriage … He took my daughter as collateral,” father Abdul Malik told Rukhshana Media, a news outlet run by Afghan women.
Malik reportedly told Rukhshana that the older man he had given his daughter to was his uncle and denied that the man intended to marry nine-year-old Parwana. Malik confirmed that he did receive $2,200 and faced intense economic hardship, but claimed the money was a loan and his daughter was collateral to receive the money. The Afghan outlet said the man owed his uncle 350,000 Afghani ($3,806.97), but he needed an extra $2,000 that he could not procure without trading for his daughter.
“He took my daughter as collateral until I pay him back,” Malik reportedly told Rukhshana on Tuesday.
Rukhshana described the CNN report as “fabricated,” though Malik did confirm that an exchange occurred. The father claimed the one that aired on CNN was not the actual loan transaction but a reenactment.
“The journalists asked me if we could re-enact the episode in front of them. And we did it,” Malik allegedly said.
The Afghan outlet noted that CNN did not respond to a request for comment on the matter. The only evidence Rukhshana presented against the CNN report was the father’s statements.
Rukhshana Media is an Afghan outlet founded by Zahra Joya in 2020, intended to be a home for female journalists in the country.
“They wanted to go around the country and tell the stories of maternal mortality, domestic violence and women’s reproductive health,” Reuters noted in a report on the outlet following the Taliban’s takeover of the country in August. “Since then, they have published stories on the taboo of menstruation, child marriage, street harassment, gender discrimination and what it means to live as a survivor of rape.”
In the report in question, CNN’s Anna Coren showcased several young girls allegedly forced into marriages with much older men for paltry sums of money. The most prominently featured story was that of Parwana, seen in the televised report being dragged away with the older man now alleged to be her great-uncle in clear distress.
“My father sold me because we don’t have bread, rice, or flour. He has sold me to an old man,” Parwana herself told CNN. Rkhshana did not, in its report, contend that Parwana’s comments were staged, leaving open the possibility that the girl believed that she was, in fact, being sold into a marriage.
The report also featured other girls allegedly sold into child marriage because their families could not afford to feed them.
Far-left CNN is far from the only media outlet documenting what appears to be skyrocketing rates of child marriage in Afghanistan following the collapse of the country’s government. Agence France-Presse (AFP) documented a case in October in which a man allegedly sold an 18-month-old girl as a child bride, claiming it the only solution to his family’s impending starvation.
“Oblivious to the deal, six-year-old Faristeh and 18-month-old Shokriya sit by her side in a mud-brick and tarpaulin shelter for displaced people,” AFP narrated. Shokriya reportedly sold for $2,800 to a family with a small boy now contracted to one day be the baby’s husband.
The Taliban declared itself the ruling entity of Afghanistan on August 15 after months of a campaign to retake the country province by province. Taliban jihadists had previously halted their attacks on the Afghan government after signing an agreement with the government of former President Donald Trump but returned to conquest after President Joe Biden announced he would violate the deal and extend the 20-year Afghan War. Biden withdrew all American troops from the country in August, not in May as Trump had agreed.
This picture, taken on October 14, 2021, shows Asho, a little girl betrothed to a 23-year-old man to whom her family was indebted, sitting outside a tent at the Shamal Darya Internally Displaced People (IDP) camp in Qala-i-Naw, Badghis Province. (Hoshang Hashimi/AFP via Getty Images)
Thousands of Afghans desperately attempted to flee the country in the immediate aftermath of the August 15 Taliban takeover, flooding U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) with families to process. American agencies have documented a significant number of “families” apparently consisting of older men and child brides.
“The reality is, overseas the vetting process sucks. There’s minimal vetting,” an anonymous official told Yahoo News in a report this month. “So now we have a 60-year-old guy with a 12-year-old girl saying, ‘That’s my wife.'”
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Intelligence and Analysis said it had observed, “many incidents in which Afghan girls have been presented to authorities as the wives of much older men” in processing facilities addressing the Taliban-induced exodus.
“Forced or coerced ‘marriages’ are indicative of the level of desperation Afghan families are willing to consider helping loved ones escape the Taliban and qualify for evacuation to Western countries,” DHS lamented in September.
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