Afghan angst

Crouched in the corner of the living room of her Aunt's home in a mud-streaked neighborhood here, Nabila, 14, shyly lifted the corner of her black headscarf.

Under it were jagged scars from the day her father, outraged at her refusal to marry the older man to whom she had been promised, took a boiling pot of oil and water from the tandoor cook stove and doused her head and face.

"No man will marry her, because of her burns," the Aunt said. "She will not go to school because boys make fun of her face. So what will her future be? I don't know. She cleans her room. Maybe that will be her job."

Nabila is not alone.

Despite a decade-long push to bring Western attention to the situation of Afghan women, their situation is arguably worse than it has ever been. It will likely worsen once the United States and NATO coalition forces complete their withdrawal from the country in 2014, with Afghanistan's politicians looking to return the country to its more conservative, pre-Western roots.

A report last fall from Oxfam International said that 87 percent of Afghan women have experienced physical, sexual or emotional abuse.

Last month, President Hamid Karzai raised fears when he endorsed a statement from Afghanistan's Ulema Council which allows men to beat their wives and supports segregating the sexes.

In the name of sharia

The move was widely seen as Karzai offering an olive branch to a resurgent Taliban - at the expense of women.

"He said it was in the name of 'sharia law,'" said one former senior Afghan official. "Sharia is empowering men. It's a constitutional crisis - he is saying, 'you are second class.'"

Their president's actions added to an already-pervasive fear among Afghan women.

They are "shaking in their boots right now," said Heather Barr, the country researcher for Human Rights Watch. The Western withdrawal is "a potential disaster for women. As people pull soldiers out, they'll lose interest on a political level and in terms of aid. And women are the baby that gets thrown out with the bath water."

They are taking drastic measures to show their desperation.

Drastic measures

Since 2010, the country's limited medical facilities have been inundated with women who have set themselves on fire. Most are between the ages of 15 and 35.

Surgeons in the avant-garde burn unit at Estaqlal Hospital - Afghanistan's most sophisticated burn treatment center - said they now see 13 to 15 self-immolation cases per month.

The trend existed in Afghanistan before coalition forces arrived more than a decade ago. But it has swelled in the last few years. As Afghan women are educated in greater numbers, they have realized the desperation of their own home situations.

Young women face abuse not just from husbands, fathers and brothers but from other women including mothers-in-law and competing wives.

"There's a lot of competition in households and between first or second or third wives for a man's attention," said Elsie de Laere, an Afghanistan country specialist for Amnesty International who specializes in women's rights. "These women are left with very little dignity and they resort to these drastic measures. Within the house, they're abused and they have to fight for resources. Internal disputes and forced marriage are the most obvious reasons given by women who have immolated."

Esteqlal, the country's foremost medical facility, is a weathered collection of low buildings off one of Kabul's main roads. Its hallways carry the familiar stench of hospitals in the developing world - stale urine and vomit, antiseptic. Up a flight of stairs is the burn unit. It is one of only two in the country. The other is in Herat.

There is a woman who speaks with Vaseline crusted on her lips, covering a facial burn. Another lifts a blanket to reveal half-charred toes, whose remains will be amputated the following week.

Traumatic times

The doctors have a rest-and-prayer room down the hall from the large communal spaces that house the burn victims. It's where they recover from what they, with tears in their eyes, say are the "most traumatic" of their experiences with patients.

They say only one out of 100 of Esteqlal's self-immolation victims survive. Last year, 700 patients passed through this burn center.

One self-immolator had just died, two days ago. Sometimes, the surgeons add, women will pretend the immolation was accidental.

"One of them said that she was cooking on a stove and oil exploded, but when she died, we got a report from police that it was self-immolation," a doctor said, his arms curled around his knees.

To the north, in the provincial city of Herat, the burn unit is usually overflowing. A city once known for its tranquil streets and beautiful glassware is now regarded as the self-immolation capital of Afghanistan.

The women fighting on the ground know their situation could get worse as NATO begins pulling its troops from the country next year. Abuse of women - even a drastic act like immolation - is still the accepted norm.

"The night before last, a woman in my neighborhood was screaming all night. We could hear the beating," said Massouda Jalal, the former minister for women's affairs. "In the morning, everyone was on the street asking, 'did you hear the voice? Did you hear the voice?' But no one interfered."

Author: Karen Leigh, Kabul
Editor: Rob Mudge