Starving Afghans sell girls of eight as brides -- Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor

Villagers whose crops have failed after a second devastating drought are giving their young daughters in marriage to raise money for food. --- While the world has focused on the war against the Taliban, the suffering of the drought-stricken villagers, almost 2.5 million of them, has largely gone unnoticed. And where once droughts would afflict Afganistan once every couple of decades, this drought has come hard on the heels of the last one, from which the villagers were barely able to recover.