When the Afghan government fell to the Taliban in August 2021, people from all over the world expressed their fears for Afghan citizens, especially Afghan women. These concerns were not unfounded, as the Taliban is known for enforcing Sharia law and upholding rules that severely oppress women from banning women from working and attending school to forbidding them from leaving the house unless accompanied by a mahram, or male guardian. 

While most news and media outlets have focused on discussing the lack of freedom that Afghans have under the Taliban, there has not been enough attention directed toward the alarming number of forced marriages perpetrated by the terrorist group. 

Under the Taliban, Afghanistan has seen the practice of forcibly marrying young girls and widows to Taliban fighters increase rapidly. A statement that is believed to have been released by the Taliban called for religious leaders to bring “girls older than 15 and widows younger than 45 to the Mujahideen Cultural Commission.” Upon receiving the kidnapped women, the Cultural Commission would sell or “gift” them to Taliban fighters as wives. According to Pashtana Durrani, an education activist from Afghanistan, “Women are being married off as sexual slaves – this would be the term I would use.” 

Sources have revealed that the process of capturing and selling women to Taliban fighters supplies the terrorist group with funding to become involved in the opium trade so that their economic power can match its newfound political power. Additionally, the practice is said to provide men with an incentive to join the group. 

Gulpari, a mother of two Afghan girls of ages 13 and 15, was forced to flee her home when the Taliban asked to marry her daughters. “They said if a house had two daughters, at least one should be given in marriage to the Taliban.” She added that her “girls were terrified when they heard this. They were scared and wouldn’t stop crying till we had fled the district.”

Afghanistan’s view of divorce, which is summarized by the old saying, “A woman only leaves her father’s house in the white bridal clothes, and she can only return in the white shrouds,” has not helped women who manage to escape their husbands. Women who divorce or leave their husbands are usually excommunicated by their family and community, and without any men to serve as their mahram, are unable to flee from their homes or country. 

Forced marriages to members of the Taliban were not the only type of forced marriage prevalent when Kabul fell. Many families paid men who were eligible to evacuate Afghanistan to marry their daughters to that they too could escape. A report by CNN revealed that “many Afghan women were forced into marriages inside the evacuation camps outside the Kabul airport so that they become easily eligible for evacuation. Some men were approached only to pose as husbands for women to flee… This has triggered concern over the possibility of human trafficking flourishing around the evacuation from Kabul.” While little data of human trafficking, especially child trafficking, due to forced marriages has been released, it is clear that many older men with underage brides are allowed into to the US as a result of poor vetting procedures. AP News added that intake staff at Fort McCoy reported multiple cases of young girls being presented as the wives of older Afghan men, as well as cases involving men with multiple child brides. Even in the “land of the free,” it seems, young Afghan girls are not free from the commitments that they were pressured or forced into back in their home country.