Girl, 13, makes third suicide attempt to escape forced marriage to 41-year-old

A teenager driven to despair at the prospect of a forced marriage has attempted suicide for the third time, while her distraught mother has been left at a loss as to how to help her.

At just 13 years old, Mahrukh*, from Faizabad in northeastern Afghanistan, once dreamed of becoming a judge. Now, her only ambition is to stay in school and escape a dreaded marriage to a man more than three times her age.

Despite her tragic attempts on her own life, Mahrukh's father Raziq* remains intent on marrying his youngest daughter to a 41-year-old man.

This man, who is involved in the gold mining business, is reported to be a wealthy friend of Raziq's. He is reportedly willing to pay whatever dowry the father wants in exchange for the child bride, who is said to look even younger than her years.

Unmoved by Mahrukh's devastation, Raziq, who has married off his four other daughters at a young age, has reportedly declared, "If you die, your dead body will belong to that man".

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Speaking with the publication Rukshana, which aims to give a voice to Afghan women, Mahrukh's mother, Amina*, revealed that her husband announced her child was to be married off over dinner back in June 2024.

Amina recalled: "Raziq suddenly announced at the dinner table, 'I’ve given Mahrukh to Qader*. May God bless her marriage.' I was stunned. I said, 'This is impossible. She's still a child."

She continued: "He told me, 'Don't speak, you foolish woman. She's grown up, let her go to her fate. It's better for her to marry sooner rather than later. She'll be a wife and belong to a man. The sooner, the better, and with more dignity'."

Raziq, 55, is said to be a very religious, conservative man who has dismissed any notion of his daughters going to school. Although Amina has tried to get him to change his mind about Mahrukh, his stance has not softened, and she now fears the teen will make another suicide attempt before the wedding day.

Sharing the emotional turmoil she's endured since bringing Mahrukh home from Faizabad Hospital, Badakhshan, Amina shared: "Since the day we brought Mahrukh back from the hospital, I haven't felt well. My head hurts so much that I think it might explode. At every moment, my blood pressure drops, and I feel weak. My daughter is burning in agony, and there’s nothing I can do to help her."

This follows harrowing reports from the Marjah district of Afghanistan, that a 45-year-old man has taken a six-year-old girl as his bride. The disturbing ceremony even proved to be abhorrent to the Taliban, who ordered the groom to wait until the girl's ninth birthday before taking her home.

Since the resurgence of the Taliban in 2021, there has been a sharp rise in the number of child marriages in Afghanistan, where women have seen their freedoms stripped away, from being forced to wear full-body coverings to being banned from travelling without a male relative.

As per a United Nations (UN) report published last year, this systematic oppression has sparked an alarming 25 per cent rise in child and forced marriages.

Afghanistan does not have a codified minimum marriage age, with the Taliban having reversed the previous age limit of 16 established after the 2001 Western invasion. A girl's marriageable age is therefore decided by Islamic law interpretation, with the Hanafi jurisprudence determining puberty to be the "threshold for readiness".

*Names were changed in this story

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