Agence France Presse

Kabul, January 3:

Habib Zada is a photographer but his two children, one year-old Zaki and six-year-old Harez, will never see his pictures. Born from an arranged marriage between blood relatives, they are both blind — the victims of an ingrained tradition, like many handicapped youngsters in Afghanistan. In a stark room heated by a woodstove at their house in Kabul, where Zada lives with his wife and 17 other relatives. As first cousins, Zada and his wife Hadaija grew up together before they were married in 1997. “I told my father, if you want, I’ll follow your directions but it is not good to marry a cousin,” Zada, told AFP.

Faced with his father’s intransigence, Zada gave in — despite the fact that two of his brothers are blind and that in marrying his cousin he increased the risk of passing on the problem.

The United Nations estimates between 800,000 and two million Afghans suffer from a disability. A quarter were caused by Afghanistan’s 25 years of war but specialists are slowly coming to the conclusion that many of the rest result from arranged intrafamilial marriages.

“In Afghanistan, disability is caused by war, accidents, poverty, diseases for mother and children, and forced marriages between cousins,” said Parween Azimi, an official at the Ministry for Martyrs and the Disabled, recently.

Masooda Jalal, Afghanistan’s new Minister for Women, who is also a paediatrician, said: “More than 13 years ago, I remember a survey that said hundreds of thousands of Afghans were mentally disabled.” According to the survey “intermarriages were the first cause of this disability,” she said.