Brides Pay High Price

Sana Abdullah was only six years old when her father entered her into a form of arranged marriage.



Under such an arrangement, the girl in question is legally married but remains with her parents until a wedding is organised, normally when she is in her teens.



Now 16, Sana can’t decide whether to accept her fate or rebel.

"I'm very sad about [this] I was [only] a child,” said the girl. "I don’t know what to do."



Sana, a third-grader at a secondary school in her home town, Qaladze, 130 kilometres northeast of Sulaimaniyah, said she feels ashamed about her plight.



"Whenever my mother sits with her friends and they talk about marriage and how their daughters have got married, I feel so bad when she tells them that I was married off as a kid," Sana, who has yet to meet her husband, said bitterly.



She says that her mother also feels bad because she wasn’t aware that her husband had committed her to what’s known as an exchange marriage.



In a typical exchange marriage, a family chooses a bride for their son, and the bride’s parents, if they have sons, request that the groom’s family provide a bride for one of their children, in a kind of straight swap.



In Sana’s case, her uncle didn’t have a daughter, so when his son wanted to get married, Sana’s father agreed to marry her to a boy from the family into which the girl’s cousin was marrying. Age and physical health are not considered in these types of marriages.



Aveen Ali, 14, was only four years old when she entered into an exchange marriage. "Out of ten girls in my extended family, six other cousins and I were married as kids," she said.



One of her uncles had fallen in love with a woman and had asked for her hand, but the woman’s family had requested a girl in return. Aveen, four at that time, along with three of her cousins, was exchanged for her uncle’s bride. "My father and my uncles didn’t regard us as human beings. We were sacrificed for their love," she said.



But now, Aveen’s husband has married another woman, and she said he is not ready to divorce her, although they have never actually met. "I always avoid seeing him. I'm not ready to end up in a marriage that was arranged by other people," she said.



Exchange marriages were once very common among Kurds and Arab tribes, but are less in evidence these days because young people are unwilling to submit to a fate decided for them by their parents, and women are generally more aware of their rights as a result of outreach work by women’s rights groups.



Last year, a group of activists started a campaign against the tradition by recording cases of women forced into exchange marriages. In just a few weeks, 5,000 came forward – five per cent of the population of Pshdar, an isolated region close to the border with Iran.



The Kurdistan Human Rights Group, the Kurdistan Women’s Union, the Islamic Clerics’ Union, and the Women’s Media and Cultural Centre are involved in the campaign.



The campaigners say that the number of girls who’ve been married off at an early age is much higher than the registered number.



Sara Faqe, a member of Kurdistan parliament, who is supervising the campaign, says most of the girls that have come to their attention go to schools in the towns and in some rural areas. But she suspects there are many who have not come forward because they are confined to their homes and fearful of their families.



The names of the women who registered - whose age ranges from 15 to 50 - have now been submitted to the Kurdish parliament.



The activists are urging parliament to outlaw the practice of exchange marriage and ensure that girls who are already married can get a divorce if they want one.



Exchange marriages are practiced in many parts of Iraq, but are particularly common in Pshdar. The area used to be quite remote and the community remains poor and close-knit, factors that are seen as fostering exchange marriages.



Impoverished families can ill afford dowries, so they provide a daughter instead and, in so doing, help to maintain the social structure of the region.



The activists’ campaign has provoked mixed reactions in the region.



Ali Hassen, 61, became the head of his family after his father died, assuming responsibility for his six brothers. "Up to now, 15 girls from my family were married when they were very young," he said, the last one in 2003 soon after she was born.



"I pity them; this [practice] will cause trouble for our girls. Some who actually live with the men they were married to as kids are always having problems with their husbands."



Abdullah Ahmed, 40, had three girls waiting for him when he was ready to marry, "I had seven sisters and one brother. When my sister got married, my father asked for [girls in return], so I was married to three girls when I was a kid."



But he never accepted the exchange marriages and chose another woman whom he was in love with. "I divorced the others so they’d have a chance to get married," he said.



Haji Mohammda, a nobleman from one of the tribes in Pshdar, who has personally supervised more than ten exchange marriages in his family, is not happy with the registration campaign.



"Why are exchange marriages bad?" he asked. "When a girl grows up she should get married, so when we find a girl from a good family, we are ready to give our girls to them [in return]."



Faqe is optimistic that the parliament will consider their petition and pass legislation to address the issue this year.



As for Sana, she has made her decision and is not ready to live with her husband. "I will ask for a divorce and get married to someone I love after I finish my studies," she said.





Najeeba Mohammad is an IWPR trainee in the Pshdar area. The names of the women interviewed have been changed to protect their identity.



This article has been produced with support from the International Republican Institute (IRI).