MARRIAGE MINDED? Muslim girls are still victims of institutionalized pedophilia

"I cannot pay you in any other way. Take my daughter," said Gul Miran, 42, a farmer in Nangarhar province.

Like many other farmers in Afghanistan, Gul Miran had planned to pay back the loan with the proceeds from his crop of poppies, which would eventually be turned into heroin. But as part of its stepped-up effort to combat the drug trade in the country, the government had ploughed under his fields, and Gul Miran was left with nothing.

"I accepted the girl in return for my loan," said Haji Naqibullah, who had advanced Gul Miran the money. "We had an agreement. He would (pay me back) regardless of whether his crops were wiped out by the weather or by the government.

"In a year or 18 months I will marry her off to my youngest son," he said. "He is 19 years old and has been married to his first wife for two years but has not had a child yet."

Payenda Gul, who grows poppies in the Shinwar district, was forced to give his 17-year-old daughter to a 38-year-old in order to pay his debt.

"When you have an agreement with an opium dealer, nothing but the opium can be paid but they cannot refuse the daughters. It is a way in which a dealer can find a wife for himself or for a son. The son may be disabled or he may be growing older and not had a wife. It is easy to present him with a pretty girl.''

Payenda Gul holds the government responsible for the situation.

"They cannot do anything about the big drug dealers but they come and plough up the small farmers' poppies and this creates the problem,'' he said. A 17-year-old girl from Jalalabad province, who refuses to disclose her name, said her father forced her into an engagement with a blind man. She said her father had taken out a loan of $1,600 but his fields had been ploughed under and he had had no choice but to offer her in return for his debt.

"I will be serving my blind husband to the end of my life,'' she said. "I am an Afghan girl and have to respect my father's choice even though I disagree with it.''

Moalem Lal Faqir, a poppy grower in the Khogyani district, also owes money but he refuses to give away his daughter. "The government ploughed my fields and I lost everything,'' he said. "The man who loaned me the money is 50 years old and wants my 20-year-old daughter as his second wife.

"But I will not do this. I will sell the land that I inherited but I will never give him my daughter.''

Syed Jafer Muram, deputy director of the Nangarhar narcotics-control section in Nangarbar province, said that farmers have few legal options to resolve their debts with drug dealers. "Cases like this don't come to the notice of officials,'' he said. "If a father tried to get help for his daughter he would be arrested for opium trading.''