It’s unclear how widespread the issue is, but it prompted enough concern for US diplomats in the United Arab Emirates to send a cable.
The sources said that some Afghan women and girls housed at one of the evacuation centers in the UAE reported that their families had forced them into marriage outside of the airport in Kabul so they could escape the country as the Taliban seized power. In some reported instances, families paid men eligible for evacuation thousands of dollars to marry or pose as husbands for women to flee.
One of the sources said US diplomats in the UAE would provide guidance to those working at the center on how to identify potential victims of human trafficking. Another said the US State Department had indicated it would coordinate with the Department of Homeland Security and the Defense Department.
CNN has reached out to the State Department for comment.
CNN previously reported on the concern shared by Afghan women who saw progress over recent years only to fear it will be lost.
Pashtana Durrani, the founder and executive director of Learn, a nonprofit agency focused on education and women’s rights, said last month that she had run out of tears for her country: “We have been … mourning the fall of Afghanistan for now quite some time. So I’m not feeling very well. On the contrary, I’m feeling very hopeless.”