Madyan: One sunny afternoon as she skipped home from school, Saneeda was accosted by her estranged father, who wanted to marry her to a man she`d never met to settle a debt of "honour". She was five years old.
A few months earlier, Saneeda`s father Ali Ahmed had eloped with a girl from another valley. To avoid violent revenge from her family, he promised to give them his daughter and niece Sapna in marriage.
Offering young girls as brides in compensation to settle disputes persists in many areas of deeply conservative Pakistan.
In Saneeda`s home district of Swat, in the country`s northwest, the practice is known as "swara".
Government data show that it is on the rise in Swat, four years after an army operation ended the Taliban`s brutal two-year rule in the scenic valley once known as the "Switzerland of Pakistan".
Nine cases were registered in the area in 2013, up from just one in 2012. Rights groups say the true number is much higher.
"My father stopped me in the street and told me that he has given me in swara and soon will hand me over to a man who will be my husband," Saneeda, wearing a golden shawl with red and purple embroidery, told AFP, her cheeks reddening in embarrassment.
Her mother dismissed it at first, but the arrangement had been ordered by a jirga, a traditional tribal gathering, and the gravity of the situation soon became clear.
"We initially thought they can`t take this girl away but then they increased pressure with every passing day to give her in swara," Fazal Ahad, Saneeda`s maternal uncle, told AFP.
Eventually Saneeda`s family got a court order protecting her. Police arrested her father and the jirga members who had decided to give her in swara.
A lucky escape, but Saneeda, now aged seven, still faces discrimination and mockery.
"Whenever I go to school, children taunt me and tell me that I have been given in swara and will be married to a man," she said.
