After 10 years of living in forced servitude and several desperate attempts to gain her freedom, Salma has finally gone home to Bangladesh. But the ordeal for the 23-year-old victim of human traffickers is far from over -- she had to leave her three small children behind.
"There is no joy in this for me," she said recently before leaving Pakistan.
"I want to go home and get proper papers, a proper visa, and come back to try and get my kids."
A decade ago, when she was just 13, Salma and two dozen other young women, under the control of a trafficking gang, crossed into Pakistan after an 1,000- mile overland passage across India.
Some of the girls were running from poor domestic situations, while others were orphans; all were lured by the prospect of good jobs and a steady income.
Their initiation into a world of indignities and exploitation began even before they crossed the frontier, when they were forced to sexually service Pakistani border guards. Once in the country, the girls were separated and sold.
The job was a routine one for the smugglers, said Dr. Attiya Inayatullah, Pakistan's minister for women's development. "This is a mafia business, with operations regionally and globally," she said. "They are organized, capable and connected."
Salma fetched 15,000 Pakistani rupees ($250), paid by a man named Jabbar living in a small village in Punjab province. He married Salma without her consent, and she later bore him three sons, all the while enduring a steady stream of physical and mental cruelty.
"There was love only for my children, nothing else," she said.
"I tried to commit suicide by throwing myself in a river, but some people jumped in to save me," she recalled, citing the overwhelming depression and desperation that led her to flee Jabbar's house several times.
Salma eventually got help from another woman, who spirited her to the relative safety of Islamabad, where Bangladeshi Embassy officials and human rights activists helped secure her passage home. Despite repeated pleas, she was refused permission to see her children before leaving.
Her story of dreams turned to nightmares is one that is repeated around the world an estimated 1 to 2 million times a year as women, children and men are kidnapped, sold or lured away from their homes for forced labor, servitude or sexual exploitation.
Human trafficking is now considered the third largest source of profits for organized crime, trailing only the drug and illegal weapons trades, according to the U.S. State Department. Human rights activists estimate the trade produces $8 billion to $9 billion annually in profits.
The largest number of trafficking victims come from Asia -- more than 225, 000 people from Southeast Asia each year and 150,000 from South Asia.
Pakistan is a source, transit and destination country - - and the abuses are wide ranging:
-- Young Pakistani boys are kidnapped and sold to work as camel jockeys in the Persian Gulf states (20,000 sent to the United Arab Emirates alone).
-- Women and children from East Asian countries and Bangladesh are brought through on their way to the Middle East to work in domestic servitude or as prostitutes.
-- Tens of thousands of women, like Salma, end up in Pakistan, trafficked from Bangladesh, Burma, Afghanistan and the Central Asian states.
-- Pakistan -- and the southern port city of Karachi in particular -- has begun to emerge as a center for the kind of lucrative "sex tourism" found in such countries as Thailand, Malaysia and India.
Pakistan's tolerance of such practices is attributable to many factors, including corruption and endemic poverty. Women are visibly subordinate to men and largely uneducated, leaving many of them highly vulnerable.
Daughters in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, for example, are often sold off to other family members or neighbors. According to the practice,
called savara, the price is determined by age, weight and beauty.
In eastern Pakistan, daughters of prostitutes -- particularly in the red light area of Lahore -- are outfitted with a natli (nose ring) at birth. When they reach puberty, bidders vie to "remove the natli." Winning bids often top $1,000.
"Women are just at the very beginning of trying to get their place in Pakistani society," said Shafqat Munir, country coordinator of the South Asian Media Committee on Human Rights (SAMCOHR). "People have yet to realize the extent of the problems. When they do, we hope for an outcry against these practices."
Shehnaz Bokhari, founder of the Progressive Women's Association, a nongovernmental aid group, said the government and police "all know what is going on, and they have known for a long time."
Bokhari sheltered Salma in her home while the latter waited for passage back to Bangladesh.
"Women like Salma break your heart," Bokhari said. "For every one that gets free, there are a thousand more who don't."
Observers' best estimates are that more than 4,000 Bangladeshi women and children are trafficked to Pakistan each year, and that more than 200,000 have already fallen prey. Amnesty International officials fear tens of thousands of Afghan women have also been sold into prostitution here.
The majority of trafficked women are under 25, and many are still in their teens. The widespread fear of contracting AIDS has led to an increased demand for younger females on the misguided perception that they are less likely to have been infected.
But the victims are often forced to have unprotected sex with large numbers of clients, working long hours in deplorable conditions. Many women fall ill within a year or two. Few are provided with any medical care.
"For local women there is no redress for grievances," said Bokhari. "How is a women from another country, with no documents and unable to speak the language supposed to get help?"
"The police are not an option," she added. "There are no shelter homes, no help at all."
More than 100 women, some of them with children, are currently languishing in jails in Karachi, which sits along a main trafficking route. Picked up without documents to prove citizenship, they have nowhere to go.
Under the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act passed by Congress in 2000, Pakistan was designated a "Tier 3" country -- one that must meet minimum standards for combating trafficking by 2003 or lose its eligibility for nonhumanitarian aid from the United States.
Inayatullah said punitive action was not the answer.
Trafficking is "not the number one problem," she said. "Root causes -- like poverty, organized crime and ignorance -- are.
"But this is an issue for all time because we are looking at millions of victims and something does have to be done."
The current government headed by President Pervez Musharraf has agreed to look closer at the trafficking issue and to consider enacting laws to protect women and children.
Pakistan's constitution bans slavery and forced labor but does not address trafficking. Women raped in the course of their trafficking experience have to fight against draconian ordinances that criminalize extramarital intimacy and leave the burden on victims.
Testimony by females carries no legal weight. If the case cannot be proved, the court turns the allegation against the victim as a confession of complicity, and she is punished. Even if they succeed in the initial proceeding, the victims may face criminal charges for illegal status in Pakistan.
Bokhari, who has spent 16 years trying to improve women's rights in Pakistan, thinks there is reason for hope.
"I have seen four democratic governments, and now a military one," she said.
"Some may call it a military dictatorship, but I think they are excellent.
"Women are not cows that can be
shackled or beaten up whenever a man decides. Musharraf is not only sympathetic
on this issue, but he is assertive, something I have not seen from a government
before. I just wish they would move faster."