ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Her father said it would be a two-week holiday to learn about her Pakistani heritage. But the British woman soon found herself captive in a remote tribal village for over a year and promised in marriage to a first cousin she'd never met.

With the British High Commission's help this month, the woman escaped Pakistan shortly before her planned wedding, avoiding the phenomenon of forced marriage that befalls scores of foreign women, including Americans, annually in this deeply conservative Islamic country.

The 20-year-old British woman of Pakistani origon , who declined to show her face and reveal her actual name and asked to go by Shazia for her own personal protection, seen in Islamabad, Pakistan on August 22, 2006. [AP]

"My dad made me believe it was just a holiday," said the 20-year-old woman, who declined to reveal her actual name and asked to go by Shazia for her own protection. "But the weeks turned into months and months. I never believed my own father would have a plan to marry me to someone I didn't know, but I was wrong."

More than 100 British nationals of Pakistani descent - 20 percent of them males as young as 14 - have been rescued in each of the past two years after being forced into marriages here. Americans with links to Pakistan are also made to marry against their will but in fewer numbers, the US Embassy said.

But this could be just the tip of the iceberg, officials say, as many women forced to marry live in isolated communities or at the mercy of authoritarian families.

Reasons abound for foreigners being forced to wed here. Britain is home to more than 800,000 Britons of Pakistani descent. Many of the first Pakistani migrants to Britain came from rural, conservative backgrounds and oppose letting their children - particularly daughters - marry into the more liberal British society.

"It is unacceptable for such fathers living in Britain to allow their daughters to grow up in an emancipated society with more freedom where they could possibly meet men," Sumaira Malik, Pakistani minister for women's affairs, said Monday. "So they force their girls to come back here and marry boys from their village."

Malik described forced marriages as "despicable" and contrary to Pakistan and Islamic law. She said the government is committed to improving educational standards and women's freedoms.

An example she cites is the proposed "Protection of Women's Rights Bill," which aims to change a controversial Islamic rape law - known as the Hudood Ordinance - that needs the testimony of four witnesses to prosecute a rape case. Voting on the law is expected within days.

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