Afghans skirt strict rules to find love on Internet

Afghan civil activist Hadi Sadiqi had long been using social media to share news, commentary and his own musings on politics when he got into a heated exchange with another member of his Facebook forum.

Sadiqi and Maleka Yawari took their argument offline, and soon their exchanges grew more personal, with articles and opinion pieces giving way to photographs, love letters — and eventually wedding vows.

“Turns out we’re both from the same district in Ghazni province, but we’d never met or even heard of each other,” Sadiqi said.

That’s not unusual in Afghanistan, a deeply conservative country where women are still largely confined to the home and arranged marriages are the norm.

But social media is allowing more and more young people to safely meet outside society’s strict confines. The trend is mainly limited to the urban middle class. Only 10 to 20 per cent of Afghans have access to the Internet, according to Roshan, the country’s top telecom provider. But Afghanistan is currently rolling out a 3G network, and as smartphones become more affordable, Internet access is projected to rise, including in remote areas of the mostly rural country.

Although coverage is limited, there are no official restrictions on the Internet in Afghanistan, making it an outlier in a region where governments closely monitor and restrict access.

Facebook is widely used in Afghanistan, while WhatsApp, Viber, Skype and Instagram are also popular.

Kabul-based media consultant Ben Bruges said Afghanistan has seen a “big generational change,” with youth using technology their parents don’t understand to escape the conservative confines. “It might be possible for more young people to talk to each other online than would be possible in their daily lives, given the restrictions on the genders talking to each other in Afghanistan,” he said.

Maqsood Akbari, a doctor from the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, agrees. He courted his wife secretly on social media after meeting her in a library in 2008. “The Internet provides a level of safety and security, protecting a couple’s social dignity and providing a precious way for young people to meet each other,” he said.