This is absolutely horrific:
"We have received credible reports of families offering daughters as young as 20 days old up for future marriage in return for a dowry," UNICEF executive director Henrietta Fore said at the weekend.
"The extremely dire economic situation in Afghanistan is pushing more families deeper into poverty and forcing them to make desperate choices, such as putting children to work and marrying girls off at a young age," she said.
The U.N. has warned that Afghanistan is on the brink of the world's most serious humanitarian crisis, with 23 million of its 38 million people unlikely to have sufficient food through the coming winter without assistance.
It's a good thing the trillions of dollars spent by the American government in Afghanistan led to lasting peace there, right?
Afghanistan's child marriage numbers have steadily improved since U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban in the aftermath of 9/11 in 2001. Prior to the invasion, the rate was 61.9 percent, among the world's worst. But it dropped markedly over the following years – to 40 percent in 2014, 33 percent in 2016, and 28 percent by 2020.
With the Taliban back in control, there are concerns that a combination of the economic crisis and stricter interpretations of Islam followed by the regime may see a reversal in that progress.
This is what it looks like when an old man buys a little girl, by the way:
[Warning: Disturbing to the depths of the soul]
If you think Joe Biden's Pentagon drone-striking little kids during the American pullout was bad, this humanitarian crisis under the heel of the Taliban is a magnitude of order many times that.
