Posted by: gukurup | March 5, 2008
Women in Afghanistan: a photo essay
Afghanistan has more than 2 million widows, and these and other desperately poor women often turn to prostitution, despite the risk of being killed by their families if they are discovered. So they remain in the shadows, beneath a double veil of tradition and shame. This woman’s husband is too old to work. She sold her daughter into marriage before the girl was 10, and now she sells herself.
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Malalai Kakar became a police officer before the rise of the Taliban |
Self-immolation has long been the preferred method of suicide in Afghanistan, but “the trend is upward |
| Girls as young as nine set themselves ablaze |
| Zahra spent 93 days in the burn unit |
Inside a Kabul home, a heavy curtain is all that separates a prostitute’s work from her family life. Her 15-year-old daughter also sells herself, but not in the house. Too many men going in and out would alert the neighbors, and that could prove fatal.
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| If the odds hold, only a couple of them will receive an education |
| she refused to wear the burka |
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