Sodaba – a child victim of forced marriage abandoned to violence and imprisonment by the Taliban

By Anonymous WRN member and journalist based in Afghanistan

Last year, Sodaba, a 16‑year‑old girl, was forced into marriage with a Taliban commander as his third wife. Long before this marriage, while she was still in sixth grade, the commander had seen her on her way to school. Struck by her youth and beauty, he used his power to pursue her relentlessly until he secured the marriage.  

Since the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, women and girls have endured systematic violence and suffocating repression, an unbearable environment that leaves them with no room to breathe. Within this climate, Taliban commanders have wielded authority to impose coercive marriages and polygamy, turning power into a weapon against women’s dignity and freedom.  

Sodaba’s father had died long before, leaving her in the care of her mother. The commander promised her mother a large dowry, claiming it would bring them a better life. But he never paid a single coin. Instead, Sodaba’s new life became a prison, trapped with two older wives who subjected her to constant pressure, endless cooking and cleaning, and brutal violence. Whenever she resisted or voiced a complaint, she was beaten mercilessly.  

Desperate, Sodaba tried several times to escape to her mother. Each time, the commander accused her mother of helping her flee. Eventually, he arrested her mother and threw her into prison.  

The last time Sodaba was beaten so severely that her arm was broken, she fled again. With nowhere safe to go, she sought refuge in the home of a neighbourhood elder. The commander tracked her down and demanded she return. But Sodaba refused. She repeated only one sentence:  

“Anywhere else I will go. But if I go back there, I will kill myself.”  

She doesn’t have any family or relatives to escape and stay with them and when no safe house and shelter could be found for her, Sodaba was sent to prison, forced to share a cell with her mother, punished simply for seeking freedom.  

The collapse of Afghanistan’s former government in 2021 was not only the collapse of a state, it was the collapse of human rights, justice, freedom, equality, and every basic protection for women. When the Taliban replaced the Ministry of Women’s Affairs with the so‑called Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, everything for women was destroyed. Their voices were silenced, their mobility locked inside their homes, and their defenders erased. With no independent human rights institutions, no women’s rights organisations, no shelters or safe houses, prison has become the only option for countless innocent women.  

Sodaba, a child bride, is a victim of forced marriage. Her case exemplifies the widespread practice of child marriage under Taliban rule, an act that directly violates international conventions, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).  

Her repeated beatings and coercion constitute grave violations of women’s rights under CEDAW (the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women). And her imprisonment alongside her mother underscores the reality of arbitrary detention, where women are punished simply for resisting violence and seeking freedom.  

As long as women and girls like Sodaba continue to suffer, all the legal terms - gender apartheid, gender persecution, international conventions - remain nothing more than words. They fail to capture the true severity of the crisis and, more importantly, they do not save or protect the lives of women and girls.  

Must Sodaba, and countless others like her, die before the world acts? How many more women must be sacrificed before the international community admits that this situation is not only severe but demands urgent, concrete, and real action?