Underage girls trapped in Pakistan bride exchanges

JAMPUR: Mohammad Ramzan can neither hear nor speak, and he has a childlike mind. But he knew his wife, Saima, was too young when she was given to him as a bride.
The 36-year-old Ramzan smiles, eager to please, as he uses his fingers to count out her age when they married. One, two, three . . . until 13, and then he stops and looks at her, points and nods several times.
The girl’s father, Wazir Ahmed, says she was 14, not 13, but her age was beside the point. It mattered only that she had reached puberty when he arranged her marriage as an exchange: His daughter for Ramzan’s sister, whom he wanted to take as a second wife.
His first wife, Saima’s mother, had given him only daughters, and he hoped his second wife would give him a son. But Sabeel wouldn’t marry him until her brother had a wife to care for him.
She would be a bride in exchange for a bride.
“We gave a girl in this family for a girl in their family,” Ahmed says. “That is our right.”
In deeply conservative regions such as this one in the south of Punjab province, the tribal practice of exchanging girls between families is so entrenched, it even has its own name in Urdu: Watta Satta, which means give and take.
A girl may be given away to pay a debt or settle a dispute between feuding families. She might be married to a cousin to keep her dowry in the family or, as in this case, married for the prospect of a male heir.
“If it is not done, our society thinks parents have not fulfilled their religious obligation,” says Faisal Tangwani, regional coordinator for the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in nearby Multan.
Ahmed sits inside the mud-walled compound where he lives now with his two wives. Outside, stray dogs roam in packs of three and four.
He says that the fact that Ramzan is nearly three times his daughter’s age is irrelevant. But the legal marrying age here is 16, and in a rare move, police did investigate Saima’s marriage after they received a complaint, possibly from a relative involved in a dispute with her father.
Ramzan and Ahmed were jailed for a few days, but Saima testified in court that she was 16 and they were released. She says she told the authorities she was 16 to protect her father and husband.
In Saima’s world of crushing poverty, where centuries-old tribal traditions mix with religious beliefs, a crippling cycle traps even the perpetrators with a life’s burden: A father who longs for a son to help support his family; a wife who must provide that son; a daughter who must become a mother even when she is still a child.
Saima’s mother, Janaat, agrees with marrying off her daughters early. She says girls are a headache after they reach puberty. They can’t be left at home alone for fear of unwanted sexual activity — or worse, the daughter leaves home with a boy of her choice.
“That would be a shame for us. We would have no honor. No. When they reach puberty quickly, we have to marry them,” she says. “Daughters are a burden, but the sons, they are the owners of the house.”
She says she accepted her husband’s marriage to another woman; after all, it’s her fault he only has daughters.
“I feel shame that I don’t have a son. I myself allowed my husband to get a second wife,” she says.
Her husband’s new wife, Sabeel, says she agreed to marry Ahmed because of her brother. She wanted him to have a wife.
“No one had been willing to give their daughters to my brother,” she says.