A recent article in The Independent by Tom Coghlan (15 April 2006) recounts the story of Gulsoma, an Afghan girl who at the age of four was sold by her widowed mother to a neighbour, as a wife to his three-year-old son. Her in- laws made her into their slave. She was beaten so badly that she suffered broken limbs, was stoned and humiliated, being forced to sleep outside, even in winter, and was fed only on scraps. She lost the hair on the back of her head because boiling water was poured on it.

When she ran away in 2000, the Taliban beat her and returned her to the family. She finally ran away successfully in 2005 after being threatened with death by her father-in-law. She was taken to the police, who beat and arrested the father-in-law. Gulsoma herself was taken under the wing of the new Afghan Women’s Affairs Ministry and, now aged 13, lives in an orphanage in Kabul and attends school. But she is left with scars, a partly disabled arm and a limp. Her father-in-law, who spent less than a year in prison, still owns her and is looking for her. As Coghlan writes, “the culture that allowed her abuse is all too familiar in southern Afghanistan”.