Reported by Mohammad Hakim | Translated by Rostam Safdari
In the remote mountain villages of Miramor district in Daikundi province, the death of 19-year-old Benazir Ahmadi has left the community subdued and shaken. Local sources say Benazir took her own life by swallowing rat poison after facing sustained pressure from her family to enter a marriage arranged without her consent. The incident occurred just days before the wedding ceremony was due to take place.
Benazir was from the Sarsang Rabat area of Miramor. She had studied up to ninth grade at Surkhjoi Girls’ High School in Rabat. Her teachers remember her as a capable, disciplined, and deeply motivated student. For Benazir, education was not simply about the future. It was the one thing that gave her purpose and hope.
Her father, Mohammad Naem Ahmadi, served as a principal at Rabat Boys’ High School during the Republican era. Former colleagues describe him as principled and devoted to his work. One of Benazir’s teachers recalls that he walked his daughter to school every morning and returned each afternoon to bring her home. In a conservative rural community, this care stood out and reflected how seriously he took his daughter’s right to education.
That sense of stability did not last. Benazir’s father was killed in a traffic accident, and the family’s life changed abruptly. Sometime later, her mother remarried in another village in Miramor district and left Benazir behind. She remained with her grandmother and uncle. According to relatives and former teachers, the household was marked by strict control and little emotional support.
A former teacher describes the change clearly. “After her father died and her mother left, Benazir became very quiet. She withdrew from others, but she still held on to her studies with determination, as if education was the last thing keeping her going.”
When girls’ schools across the region were closed, that final source of stability disappeared. Cut off from education and confined to her home, Benazir found herself with no opportunities and no clear path forward.
It was during this period that her grandmother decided to arrange her marriage without her consent. The intended groom, a man named Dawood, was a mechanic and significantly older than her. Local sources say Benazir repeatedly objected and asked her grandmother and other family elders to reconsider. Her objections, however, were not seen as a right to choose. They were interpreted as defiance of tribal norms and family authority.
Neighbors recall the grandmother dismissing Benazir’s resistance, saying that schooling had made her shameless and unwilling to accept social values.
This attitude left little room for discussion or compromise. In the weeks that followed, the combined pressure of isolation, forced marriage, the loss of education, and the absence of family support took a heavy toll on Benazir’s mental health. Relatives say she became deeply depressed and overwhelmed by hopelessness.
In the month of Jawza, just days before the wedding preparations were to be completed, Benazir Ahmadi ended her life by ingesting rat poison. She was buried at the age of nineteen.
Her death once again highlights the deadly intersection of forced marriage, the systematic exclusion of girls from education, and structural violence against women and girls in Afghanistan. For many young girls, the denial of choice and opportunity continues to come at the highest possible cost.
