Afghan women being forcefully married to flee the country: US officials

As thousands of Afghans tried to flee the country after the Taliban took control of the nation, some women have opened up about forced marriages.

US officials who have been processing Afghan refugees abroad have also alerted the State Department that many women and girls have been forced to get married to Afghan men in order to evacuate from the country.

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Afghan men have been forcing women to pose as their wife so that they can flee the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. These men have, reportedly, forcefully asked women outside the Kabul airport to pose as their wife, but may now be taking undue advantage of these girls and women.

As per officials, some reputed families also paid thousands of dollars to men, who were eligible for evacuation, to pose as husbands for these women and help them escape the Taliban rule.

Following these warnings form the US diplomats in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the US State Department has vowed to work with the Department of Homeland Security and the Defense Department and identify such cases of human trafficking.

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The US has been taking help of other countries who are acting as a stopover for Afghan refugees. The evacuees are first taken to other countries, such as the UAE, where the officials vet and process individuals and house them in local refugee centre for some time before flying them back to the US.

While people have been desperately trying to flee the country to get away from the new Taliban regime, women and minority communities are in the most vulnerable spot right now.

People were trying their best to send their daughters, wives and other female relatives out of Afghanistan after several initial reports claimed that the Taliban were collecting a list of all unmarried and widowed women and girls to make them ‘wives of Taliban’.