"The girl who was exchanged for a dog" has become a sensation around the world, sparking outrage in human rights circles. But the canine connection is a minor part of the story, a curiosity that served as a hook to bring the case to public attention. It appears that 11-year-old Sanubar and her mother may have been the victims of a tradition where females are regarded as chattels, and of a climate of instability and weak central government in which armed men behave like local sovereigns, immune to punishment. The case has been muddled by mutual accusations and denials. What is clear is that Sanubar disappeared after being taken from her home by force in August. "Armed men broke into my house at midnight and took my daughter, " said Sanubar's mother, Gulshah, 50. "They cut me with a knife. I have filed complaints with the attorney general and with the governor, but nobody is helping me. " Gulshah insists that her daughter was taken by Mullah Nazar, the district government chief of АИ Abad district, the area of Kunduz province where she earns a meagre living tending livestock. Nazar is a former militia commander who belongs to the Jami-at-e-Islami faction which is dominant in northeast Afghanistan. The militias attached to such factions - many of them originally mujahe-din groups from the Eighties - were supposed to have been disbanded and disarmed long ago under United Nations-sponsored schemes, but their commanders still exercise considerable power in their home regions. According to Gulshah, Nazar handed her daughter over to a man named Nematullah, and received a prize fighting dog in return. Kunduz residents say Nazar then presented the dog to a more powerful commander in the region as a form of tribute. Nazar's version of events is different. He denies any involvement in the kidnapping, saying that it was Nematullah himself who took the girl. Nematullah apparently regards himself as the girl's father-in-law, since she was promised to his grown son when she ... Читать далее