ARE DATING SITES DIFFERENT FOR US GIRLS THAN FOR YOUNG PAKISTANI GIRLS?”
It began with an errant dog,. It’s culminated with the forced betrothal of 15 little girls, some of them as young as three, as compensation in a case of tribal feuding in a remote part of Pakistan. It’s thought that around 20 people have died in the bitter quarrel, and the marriage offer of the girls is meant to end the bloodletting. Under a brutal custom, called Vani, the girls are being traded as settlement of a long-running dispute between two tribes. This case occurred on the border between the southern provinces of Sindh and Baluchistan, but the practice, known as Swara in some areas, isn’t uncommon in rural parts of Pakistan. “The murderer gets away. It is his daughter, his sister, his niece, that pays the price,” said Samar Minallah, a human rights activist based in Islamabad. “The girl has to pay the price for the rest of her life.” Vani usually involves the daughters of illiterate and poor people, who don’t have money or other assets to give as compensation. Minallah said that
