KABUL: Nazir Shah sifts through a pile of magazines for teenage girls. "Look at what our sweet girls are suffering," says Mr Shah, a white- bearded, retired Afghan army officer while poring over the letters pages. "These are real stories about girls who are suffering so much. Look: 'My family's choice of husband is driving me to suicide."'

He has a special interest in the trials of Afghanistan's young women. Six months ago, after being bullied by her in-laws, his daughter, Mallali Nurzi, 26, soaked herself in petrol and struck a match.

Alerted by her screams, Mallali's young daughter discovered her mother writhing in flames. By the time the fire was extinguished, Mallali was burned all over. It took her 24 hours to die. In a suicide note to her parents, she explained why she had chosen such a horrific end.

"Her husband's family were treating her like an animal," said Mr Shah, tears trickling down his cheeks.

"Every minute of every day, she was fetching water, growing crops, looking after animals and children, cleaning the house. She was patient, but it was too much for her. She was educated and sensitive. She found it hard to live like a slave."

Mallali was not alone in her suffering, nor in the agonizing way she chose to die. Anecdotal evidence suggests several hundred young women are burning themselves to death every year in western Afghanistan.

A government mission sent to investigate the problem in Herat, the biggest city in the country's west, reported that at least 52 young, married, or soon-to-be married women had burned themselves to death in the city in recent months. The youngest was a 13-year-old bride- to-be.

Mr Shah says he knows of more than 80 cases of self-immolation in nearby Farah province - where Mallali took her life - in the past two years. A niece of his was among the victims.

"There is not a village in Farah where a young woman has not burned herself to death," he said.

Self-immolation has an unsavoury place in the histories of several Asian countries, as a form of female suicide.

But unlike the Hindu practice of suttee, for example, whereby widows throw themselves or are thrown on to their husbands' funeral pyres, self-immolation in Afghanistan is not born out of cultural imperative, but despair. Unlike suttee in India, self-immolation in Afghanistan seems to be increasing.

"In our culture, women have always burned themselves, because they have always been so badly treated," said Amina Safi Afzali of the Afghan Human Rights Commission. "But this phenomenon was never as prevalent as it is today."

Behind the increase, says Ms Afzali, is a disillusionment felt by many educated Afghan women because the two years since the fall of the Taliban have brought precious little freedom. This is felt most among former refugees who returned from Iran and who had grown accustomed to a freer life there.

Significantly most of the female suicides recorded in Herat, about 60 miles from the border with Iran, were educated women, including several nurses and teachers.

"There are many more pressures on young Afghan women today because they have learned what freedom is from radio and television, but that is not what they have," Ms Afzali said.

"In the past, every girl knew she belonged to her family, she existed only for her father and her husband: she knew she wasn't free.-Dawn/The Guardian News Service.