Hadiqa Bashir, 19, has been actively working against early and forced marriages for the last eight years in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, once a hotbed of the Pakistani Taliban.
For years, the Taliban broadcasted threats on the radio to intimidate girls into not attending school. The militants controlled the entire valley from 2007 to 2009, when the Pakistani Army retook the area.
Bashir has taken on the challenge of ending child marriage in a community where it is the norm and where girls can be offered for marriage in exchange for settling disputes.
Her father, Ifthikar Ahmad, a government contractor, is a former schoolteacher. Her mother, Sajda Ifthikar, is a senior consultant at a local dispute resolution center. Bashir is their only daughter; she has two younger brothers.
She is now studying for her bachelor’s degree in sociology at Jahanzeb College, in Saidu Sharif, the capital of the Swat District in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province.
Bashir told The Media Line in an exclusive interview: “The idea of standing up against forced marriages came to me when a friend got married at an early age. She was constantly tortured by her husband who made her mentally ill.
As Published by THEJERUSALEM POST
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