Divorce by SMS Rife Among Tajik Migrants

Divorce actually means more than an end of marriage - it causes untold mental anguish, especially if the spouse never saw it coming.

Nodira knew that life would be difficult when her husband left their home in Tajikistan for a job packing lorries in distant Russia, but they had two children and needed the money to survive.

What she never imagined was that their marriage would end, not with a bang or even a whimper, but with the tinny beep of a message on the inbox of her mobile phone.

"Talaq, talaq, talaq" -- three short Arabic words flashed across the tiny screen and 29-year-old Nodira was divorced.

"I was shocked after reading that SMS. I instantly thought it was a mistake or someone's evil joke. I had bad thoughts in my mind, I wanted to hang or drown myself, or drink vinegar from such shame," she said.

Stuck working abroad for years at a stretch to escape Tajikistan's crushing poverty, some men have begun divorcing their wives using short mobile text messages (SMS), sowing confusion, heartbreak and destitution back home.

"What did I do wrong?" Nodira wonders. "This question is still torturing me. I was looking after my husband's parents, was cleaning the yard, washing, cooking for a big family. Everything was on me all these years."

Tajikistan, a deeply conservative majority-Sunni Muslim country whose rugged mountain peaks form the soaring borders of Afghanistan and western China, has the dubious distinction of being Central Asia's poorest state.