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Khalida´s fathersays she´s 9-or maybe 10.As much as Sayed Shah loves his 10children，thefunctionally illiterate Afghan farmer can´t keep track of all their birthdates.Khalida huddles at his side，trying to hide beneath her chador andheadscarf.They both know the family can´t keep her much longer.Khalida´sfather has spent much of his life raising opium，as men like him have beendoing for decades in the stony hillsides of eastern Afghanistan and on thedusty southern plains.It´s the only reliable cash crop most of those farmersever had.Even so，Shah and his family barely got by：traffickers may prosper，but poor farmers like him only subsist.Now he´s losing far more than money."I never imagined I´d have to pay for growing opium by giving up mydaughter，"says Shah.The family´s heartbreak began when shah borrowed$2000from a local trafficker，promising to repay the loan with 24kilos ofopium at harvest time.Late last spring，just before harvest，a governmentcrop-eradication team appeared at the family´s little plot of land in Laghmanprovince and destroyed Shah´s entire two and a half acres of poppies.Unable tomeet his debt，Shah fled with his family to Jalalabad，the capital ofneighboring Nangarhar province.The trafficker found them anyway and demandedhis opium.So Shah took his case before a tribal council in Laghman and beggedfor leniency.Instead，the elders unanimously ruled that Shah would have toreimburse the trafficker by giving Khalida to him in marriage.Now the familycan only wait for the 45-year-olddrugrunner to come back for his prize.Khalidawanted to be a teacher someday，but that has become impossible."It´s myfate，"the child says.
Afhans disparaginglycall them "loan brides"--daughters given in marriage by fathers whohave no other way out of debt.The practice began with the dowry a bridegroom´sfamily traditionally pays to the bride´s father in tribal Pashtun society.These days the amount ranges from$3，000or so in poorer places like Laghman andNangarhar to $8，000or more in Helmand，Afghanistan´s No.1opium-growingprovince.For a desperate farmer，that bride price can be salvation--but at a cruelcost.Among the Pashtun，debt marriage puts a lasting stain on the honor of thebride and her family.It brings shame on the country，too.President HamidKarzai recently told the nation："I call on the people [not to]give theirdaughters for money；they shouldn´t give them to old men，and they shouldn´tgive them in forced marriages."
All the same，localfarmers say a man can get killed for failing to repay a loan.No one knows howmany debt weddings take place in Afghanistan，where 93percent of the world´sheroin and other opiates originate.But Afghans say the number of loan brideskeeps rising as poppy-eradication efforts push more farmers into default."This will be our darkest year since 2000，"says Baz Mohammad，65，awhite-bearded former opium farmer in Nangarhar."Even more daughters willbe sold this year."The old man lives with the anguish of selling his own13-year-old daughter in 2000，after Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar bannedpoppy growing."Lenders never show any mercy，"the old man says.Local farmers say more than one debtor has been bound hand and foot.thenlocked into a small windowless room with a smoldering fire.slowly choking todeath.
Efforts to promoteother crops have failed.Wheat or corn brings $250an acre at best，while poppygrowers can expect 10times that much.Besides.poppies are more dependable：hardier than either wheat or corn and more tolerant of drought and extreme heatand cold.And in a country with practically no government-funded credit forsmall farmers，opium growers can easily get advances on their crops.Theborrower merely agrees to repay the cash with so many kilos of opium，at aprice stipulated by the lender--often 40percent or more below market value.Islam forbids charging interest on a loan，but moneylenders in poppy countryelude the ban by packaging the deal as a crop-futures transaction--and nevermind that the rate of return is tantamount to usury.