[Pak Daily Times] According to Oxfam International, some 87 percent of Afghan women have experienced violence in the form of forced marriages, physical, sexual or psychological abuse.Last year, a former Afghan warlord told me that women were treated like dogs in his province. Being an Afghan journalist, I have authored two books about the mistreatment of women in my country. Violence against women and teenaged girls in Afghanistan is growing. A UN report recently claimed that there was a 20 percent increase in violence and mistreatment. The annual report on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict says more than 300 women and girls were brutally killed and 560 injured by their husbands and parents in 2012.
On December 14, 2013, the BBC reported that an Afghan official confirmed that a man had incised the nose and lips of his 30-year-old wife, Setara, in Herat