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Naseema works dawn to dust to buy drugs for her spouse

Naseema works dawn to dust to buy drugs for her spouse

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21 Apr 2018 - 08:33
Naseema works dawn to dust to buy drugs for her spouse
author avatar
21 Apr 2018 - 08:33

KANDAHAR CITY (Pajhwok): Naseema, not a real name, a resident of southern Kandahar province, says her husband forces her to work outside home and beats her to buy him drugs.

The 38-year-old woman told Pajhwok Afghan News that she worked from dawn to dusk daily to earn some money to feed her children and buy drugs for her husband.

Naseema, the mother of five children, added if she refused to work, her husband beat her and lobbed abusive words at her.

However, her story doesn’t end here. She said her husband sold their daughter against 90,000 Pakistani rupees and she had since been trying to get her back.

Despite fearing the wrath of her husband and family, Naseema agreed to be interviewed because she wanted to tell her life story.

“Eighteen years ago when I was 20 my family married me to a young man. It was the start of my life’s bad days. My husband’s behavior was not good from the beginning, he used to come late home at night and slowly I came to know he is addicted to drugs.”

Due to fear, she did not tell anyone about his spouse behavior and drug use and endured the situation for years.

Naseema said her in-laws separated them at a time when she was the mother of three children and her husband was jobless. “We started living in an old and almost ruined home and thus started another unfortunate part of life.”

“My husband used to steel household items from his own house to buy drugs with the money, whenever I stopped him from doing so, he thrashed me. I could not take divorce due to my children and would bear everything for their sake.”

She said with the passage of time when all households were sold, he started forcing her to work and earn money so he could buy drugs.

“He took our 12-year-old son to a mechanic shop for work and told the mechanic to give him money,” said Naseema, adding her son wanted to go to school but his father put him at a mechanic shop.

“Me and my son remain out of home from morning to evening to earn money for his [husband] drugs,” she said.

Naseema gets up early in the morning and works in a private hospital as cook and cleaner and gets 7,000 afghanis per month.

She said more than half of her salary was used for purchasing drugs for her spouse and a small amount was put aside for children cloths and other expenses.

“If I don’t work, I have to face torture and death threats,” she said.

Naseema said she was unaware her husband had sold their daughter for 90,000 rupees. Her husband spent the money on drugs and had promised the person who gave him money that his daughter would wed his son on reaching puberty.

To get out of the situation, Naseema often prays to God and demands death for her husband because according to her he has kept hostage the entire family.

According to the Human Trafficking and Migrants Trafficking Law’s article third, clause first, getting an unfair benefit of an individual’s compulsion is human trafficking.

Kandahar Women’s Affairs Director Ruqiya Achakzai said there were more cases similar to Naseema’s in which drug addicted husbands forced their wives into work.

She said that many such cases were yet to be reported or exposed.Even some men, addicted to drugs, had pushed their wives into the menace to keep them from complaining or seeking divorce, she added.

Many women are trying to separate from their husbands addicted to drugs, Achakzai maintained. Many addicted men took money from their wives by forceor sold household items, she claimed.

She explained many of the women, havingsmall children who needed to be fed and cared for, could not lead good lives even after getting divorce.

About Nasima, she said no one by this name had approached her office yet.Achakzai stressed opium cultivation, drug smuggling and addiction must be curbed otherwise the crisis would deteriorate with time.

Fakhruddin Faiz, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) deputy head for Kandahar, acknowledged the women whose husbands were addicted to drugs led difficult lives.

In most instances, male addicts forced their wives into prostitution to earn money for them, he alleged, saying most of such women could not raise their voice for security due to fear and other reasons.

Faiz said he had organised meetings with different organisationsto promote public awareness on the social issue.

Gul Mohammad Shukran, Kandahar’s counternarcotics director, said a public health department survey showed more than 100,000 people,10 percent of them women, were addicted to drugs in the province.

Most of the women addicts had been forced by their husbands into drug consumption, he said.

Nek Mohammad Ahmadi,head of the Commission on Combating Human and Migrant Trafficking (CCHMT) for the province, said no case had been registered yet with them.However, he said many such cases remained unreported.

Article 3 of the Combating Human and Migrant Trafficking law says recruiting (bringing under control) someone, transferring, threatening or using force against someone for benefit, kidnapping and deception are types of human trafficking in people.

Nh/mds/ma/mud

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