I was completely outraged when I read the New York Times article from this past Monday regarding a six-year-old girl essentially sold to another family to pay a debt.  Somewhere in the world there should be a group or organization with enough money and force to rescue a child about to be sold off in to slavery.  Well not actually slavery.  Six year old Naghma Mohammad was to be married to the seventeen year old son of the man to whom the little girl’s father owed the debt.  According to the article written by Alissa J. Rubin, “the arrangement effectively valued her life at $2,500”, the amount of money that Naghma’s father owed.  Taj Mohammad said, “I was thankful to them at the time, so it was my decision, but the elders also demanded that I do this.”  The elders are senile old men with about as much usefulness and purpose as a mosquito. So a tiny little six-year-old was to be taken from her family to be married off and raped by a seventeen year old teenager.  Fortunately, an anonymous donor stepped in and paid off Taj Mohammad’s debt.  Many other small children are not so lucky.  This article demonstrates why countries like Afghanistan will never be more than third-world and backwards.  How does an entire group of people never grow more intelligent or thoughtful?  How does an entire community, culture, never improve or change?  What is it that keeps these people from bettering their plights?  Perhaps it’s the isolation of the terrain.  Perhaps they simply don’t have what it takes to break the culture barrier.  But make no mistake, this is an inferior culture and one that ultimately needs to be fixed or eliminated.  Unfortunately, neither Russia, nor the US could  defeat these mud hut, cave dwellers.  The world should be outraged by this story and do whatever it takes, up to and including removing children who are bought and sold, from such an environment.  But of course that won’t happen.  Nothing will change.  And the lives of other little girls like Naghma will be forgotten and amount to nothing more than an occassional thousand word article on the front page of a newspaper half way around the world.