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Despite the world community campaigns to end violence against women, an Afghan man chopped off the lips and nose of his wife in the western Herat province on Friday.
After committing the barbaric act, the man fled and is still at large, police said.
"My husband asked money to buy drugs. Since I did not have money, he asked me to sell my jewelry and when I refused, he cut off my lips and nose," Sitara, a housewife, said in a hospital in Herat.
Sitara, 30, a native of Herat province which is 640 km west of Kabul, said she married Azam from Anjil District 12 years ago hoping to have a happy married life.
But her husband got hooked in drugs, refused to look for a job. This has forced her and her four daughters to beg in the streets. "He maltreats us whenever he fails to get money from us," Sitara said.
"Every time my mother refused to give money to my father, he would beat her," said Frishta, the couple's 12-year-old daughter.
According to the Herat police, Sitara's husband must be hiding in the nearby districts after realizing the gravity of his crime.
This is not the first case of barbaric violence against women in post-Taliban Afghanistan.
Last week, the United Nation Assistant Mission in Afghanistan ( UNAMA) reported that 650 cases of violence against Afghan women have been registered from October 2012 to September 2013.
"In 16 provinces police and prosecutors registered 650 incidents of violence against women, with prosecutors using the law for Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW) in 109 of those cases or 17 percent of the 650. The courts have so far decided 60 cases applying the said law," Director of Human Rights of UNAMA Georgette Gagnon said in a press conference in Kabul on Dec. 8.
The status of women has tremendously improved in post-Taliban Afghanistan compared with 12 years ago when Taliban regime ruled the country but Afghan women are still suffering.
The brutal Taliban regime had confined women to their houses and outlawed schooling for girls. In today's Afghanistan women are active in political, economic and social activities. There are three women in Afghan cabinet and several women in parliament, and 30 percent of the 8 million school children are girls.
Nevertheless, in the war-torn and conservative Afghanistan, some traditional practices that violate women's rights are still widespread. Child marriage, forced marriage and exchange marriages are cited by human right activists as the most common violations.
Sitara's brother is asking for justice for what happened to his sister. "The authorities should exert all efforts to arrest Azam and let him pay for his crime," he said.
