BBC: This Is Sick Beyond Measure

Since the American pullout from Afghanistan, the fate of Afghan women has become uniformly bleak. 

Girls can’t go to school. Women can’t go out in public alone or speak when men are around, and now young girls are being sold as chattel. 

This is life under the Taliban, and the BBC wants you to know that the fathers who sell their children are the real victims in this barbaric country. 

Yeah, it’s quite a feat to describe a young girl being sold into sex slavery and framing the narrative to portray the PERSON WHO SOLD HER as the sympathetic figure in the story.

Who but the BBC?

— Cruadin (@cruadin) May 19, 2026

I’m not joking. That is the angle that the BBC has taken to describe the horrific practice of selling young girls to wealthier men for their sexual pleasure. 

It’s sick. 

“I come home from work with parched lips, hungry, thirsty, distressed and confused. My children come to me saying ‘Baba, give us some bread’. But what can I give? Where is the work?”

Abdul tells us he is willing to sell his girls for marriage, or for domestic work. “If I sell one daughter, I could feed the rest of my children for at least four years,” he says.

He hugs Rohila, kissing her as he cries. “It breaks my heart, but it’s the only way.”

“All we have to eat is bread and hot water, not even tea,” says their mother, Kayhan.

The choice to sell daughters over sons, is because culturally sons are widely seen as future breadwinners, and here in Afghanistan, with the Taliban’s restrictions on education and work for women and girls, it is even more pronounced.

Additionally, there is a tradition in which a marital gift is given to the family of the girl from the family of the boy during marriage.

Two of Abdul and Kayhan’s teenage sons work polishing shoes in the town centre. Another collects rubbish, which Kayhan uses as fuel for cooking.

The BBC’s story begins with the sorry state of Afghanistan’s economy, describing how difficult it is for men to find work in a medieval hellhole. 

Not once does this article ask “who is buying children and why?”

Nor does it ask “why are they selling their girls, not boys?”

Is a lack of basic curiosity a requirement for the BBC now? https://t.co/4X3MjCqLX8

— Ellie Rofe (@eliotranch) May 19, 2026

No doubt that is true. Life under the Taliban is grotesque. But so is the practice of selling one’s children to pedophiles, and the BBC exerts great effort to excuse the practice because life is hard in Afghanistan. 

Saeed Ahmad tells us he has already been forced to sell his five-year-old daughter, Shaiqa, after she got appendicitis and a cyst in her liver.

“I had no money to pay the medical expenses. So I sold my daughter to a relative,” he says.

Shaiqa’s surgery was successful. The money for it came from the 200,000 Afghani ($3,200; £2,400) she has been sold for.

“If I had taken the whole sum at that time, he would have taken her away. So I told him just give me enough for her treatment now, and in the next five years you can give me the rest after which you can take her. She will become his daughter-in-law,” explains Saeed.

Shaiqa puts her tiny arms around his neck. Their close bond is evident, but in five years, when she is just 10, she will have to leave and go to the relative’s home to marry one of his sons.

“If I had money, I would never have taken this decision,” Saeed says. “But then I thought, what if she dies without the surgery?

“Giving away your child at such a young age, carries a lot of anxiety. Underage [marriages] have their problems; however, because I couldn’t pay for her treatment, I was thinking, at least she will be alive.”

The practice of underage marriage remains widespread in Afghanistan and is increasing due to the Taliban government’s bar on education for girls.

Selling children for child marriages has been a longstanding practice in Muslim countries, and no matter how you spin it, it is barbaric. This man sold his five-year-old. To a relative, which makes it a two-fer. Consanguineous marriages are also common in Muslim countries, and Britain’s NHS now promotes them as a healthy cultural practice in the UK, as a nod to Muslims in that country. 

The NHS has been urged to apologise for publishing an article extolling the benefits of first-cousin marriage despite the increased risk of birth defects.

The article published last week by the NHS England’s Genomics Education Programme says first-cousin marriage is linked to “stronger extended family support systems and economic advantages”.

But the practice has also been linked to oppression of women and also has a proven increased risk of genetic disease in offspring of first-cousin relationships.

The UK is now extending welfare benefits for second and third wives in the UK, despite polygamy being illegal there. 

Polygamy is not legal in the UK. Under UK law, only one legal marriage or civil partnership is permitted at a time. Entering into a second marriage while already legally married is a criminal offense is bigamy, which is punishable by up to seven years in prison, so wtf?🤬 https://t.co/SxzAFDnQYT

— Bandit2904🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧 (@Bandit2904) May 18, 2026

It’s hard not to assume that the BBC is engaged in a whole-of-society effort to normalize barbaric Muslim practices, just as the two-tier system that normalizes rape, encourages Muslim prayers blocking public streets, and allows marches with the flags of terrorist organizations and chants calling for the deaths of Jews and the installation of Sharia law. 

No doubt the conditions are horrific in Afghanistan, as described in this heartbreaking article. As the Taliban has increased its grip and imposed ever more restrictions on women and any Western practice, aid donors are reluctant to do business in the country. 

But selling children is not a general practice for poor people. It is, though, a part of a tradition in Muslim cultures going back centuries. 

Finding excuses for this barbarism may not be quite as sick as a culture that permits and normalizes it, but it certainly is in the ballpark. 

Back in the colonial days, British colonizers put a stop to horrific practices, such as widows burning themselves on the funeral pyres of their husbands. There was no sense of shame or sympathy for the indigenous, because barbarism is barbarism. 

But Westerners have lost their cultural confidence; we are ashamed of our colonial history, and as the pendulum swung to the opposite side, we have lost our moral compass. 

Creepy Scott Wiener campaign event featured drag queens including one mocking women while dressed as a pig singing “Wiener is a girl’s best friend” in front of kids

This is one the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen pic.twitter.com/Ceaz5oSWfT

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 18, 2026

Normalizing degeneracy is not “enlightenment.” It is the sign of cultural decay. 

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