Written by: Natalia Perez
Secretary of State Tony Blinken recently confirmed reports during a Senate hearing on Tuesday that young children were transported from Afghanistan with older men as child brides. This has been an ongoing concern for many representatives, as it just adds to the Biden administration’s continuous failure to account for the branching out effects that the botched Afghan withdrawal has on many innocent people, including child brides.
Sen. Ted Cruz challenged Blinken regarding the numbers, citing data from the World Health Organization that over 50 percent of wives in Afghanistan were married as child brides. However, Blinken held his tongue and said he did not know the exact number of underage girls or the number of girls separated upon evacuation.
Blinken insists that the government is being “vigilant” in accounting for all the child brides that were transported during the evacuation process. However, as Cruz continued his line of questioning, the government’s “vigilant” attention seemed to be insufficient. When Cruz asked Blinken how many child brides have been accounted for, his inadequate response was “about a handful.”
This directly contradicts what a government official recently told Yahoo News, where he cited that “there isn’t a small number (of child brides).” Blinken’s confounding remarks suggest that the White House is trying to downplay the numbers to protect Biden’s flopping public perception.
Photo from: Stephanie Sinclair
