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To escape, Afghan women pick fiery death

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published November 19, 2006

KABUL, Afghanistan - Blood dripped down the 16-year-old girl's face after another beating by her drug addict husband. Worn down by life's pain, she ran to the kitchen, doused herself with gas from a lamp and struck a match.

Desperate to escape domestic violence, forced marriage and hardship, scores of women across Afghanistan each year are committing suicide by fire. While some gains have been made since the fall of the Taliban five years ago, life remains bleak for many Afghan women in the conservative and violence-plagued country, and suicide is a common escape.

Young Gulsum survived to tell her story. Her face and feet were untouched by the flames, but beneath her red turtleneck sweater, floral skirt and white shawl, her skin is puffy and scarred.

"It was my decision to die. I didn't want to be like this, with my hands and body like this," she said, sitting in a hospital in Kabul.

In Herat province, where the practice has been most reported and publicized, there were 93 cases last year and 54 so far this year. More than 70 percent of these women die.

"It's all over the country. ... The trend is upward," said Ancil Adrian-Paul of Medica Mondiale, a nonprofit group that supports women and girls in crisis zones.

The group has seen girls as young as 9 and women as old as 40 set themselves on fire. But many incidents remain hidden, Adrian-Paul said.

"There is this collusion of silence," Adrian-Paul said.

Five years after the fall of the repressive Taliban regime, domestic violence affects "an overwhelming majority" of Afghan women and girls, according to a recent report from Womankind, a women's rights groups.

An estimated 60 to 80 percent of Afghan marriages are forced, the report said. Under the hard-line Taliban regime, women were unable to vote, receive education or be employed. In recent years, women have gained the right to cast ballots, and female candidates have run for Parliament, but women are often still regarded as second-class citizens.

[Last modified November 19, 2006, 02:08:30]