TIME–  Fawzia felt like she had no way out. Married off to her cousin at age 16, she had been beaten routinely by her husband and in-laws in their poor rural home in Paktia province for the first three years of her marriage. She complained bitterly to her parents, but no solution seemed imminent.

Marriage had become too much for her to bear. Then, after she saw her brother-in-law strike his wife on the head with a gun, Fawzia finally did what she had threatened to do many times before: she doused herself in cooking fuel and struck a match.

Now Fawzia (whose name has been changed because of her age) lies in a hospital bed with third-degree burns covering 35% of her body and ash coating the insides of her lungs. Her physician, Dr. Ahmed Shah Wazir, believes it’s unlikely that she will survive. The terrifying thing is that she is far from the only person in Afghanistan to take such drastic action.

The Ministry of Women’s Affairs has documented a total of 103 women who set themselves on fire between March 2009 and March 2010. No one knows what the real numbers are, given the difficulty of collecting data in the country. “More than 80% [who try to kill themselves in this way] cannot be saved,” says Wazir, who runs the burn unit at Kabul’s Istiqlal Hospital, one of only two such specialized wards in Afghanistan. (See pictures of Muslim women leading a soft revolution.)

Wazir believes that most of his would-be patients never make it to the hospital. In some cases, families are too ashamed or fearful of prosecution to report what happened. “There are many such cases where, because of honor, because of the media, [the families] don’t want to disclose it,” says Selay Ghaffar, director of the Kabul-based NGO Humanitarian Assistance for the Women and Children of Afghanistan (HAWCA). “I’m sure there are many, many cases that are still invisible.” “I have seen a number of instances of women setting themselves on fire in my life,” says Fawzia’s mother, wiping away tears. She insists that there is nothing unusual about her daughter. “Four months ago, someone else from our village lit herself on fire and died.”

In recent years, the dramatic suicide method employed by women in this war-torn country has drawn wide attention, amid speculation that the trend might be growing. Some, like Wazir, blame Iranian TV and cinema for romanticizing suicide by fire. (For example, in the 2002 movie Bemani, a girl uses self-immolation to escape a forced marriage.) He points out that many of his patients, including Fawzia, are refugees who have returned from Iran. Other observers argue that the practice has long existed as a method by which Afghan women try to escape their sorrows and that improved monitoring since the fall of the Taliban has only made it more prominent in public awareness. The Afghan government, however, says that in the past five years, the numbers have dropped.

Read full article about Afghan Women Self Immolation.

Photo by AfghanistanMatters Flickr User

© COPYRIGHT TIME, 2010

SEATTLE TIMES– Jewish settlements control more than 42 percent of the West Bank, and much of that land was seized from Palestinian landowners in defiance of an Israeli Supreme Court ban, an Israeli human rights group said Tuesday.

The group’s findings echo what other anti-settlement activists have claimed in the past: That settlements have taken over lands far beyond their immediate perimeters, sometimes from private Palestinians. Israel’s settlements have been a much-criticized enterprise throughout the decades and a major obstacle to peacemaking with the Palestinians.

“The extensive geographic-spatial changes that Israel has made in the landscape of the West Bank undermine the negotiations that Israel has conducted for 18 years with the Palestinians and breach its international obligations,” the B’Tselem group said in a summary of its report.

Settlers disputed the figures and said the report by the B’Tselem group was politically motivated. Israeli officials had no comment. The report was based on official state documents, including military maps and a military settlement database, the B’Tselem said.

Although the actual buildings of the settlements cover just 1 percent of the West Bank’s land area, their jurisdiction and regional councils extends to more than 42 percent, the group added.

Continue reading about Israeli Settlements.

By AMY TEIBEL

Photo by flickr user Frecklebaum

© COPYRIGHT SEATTLE TIMES, 2010

AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE– Thailand on Tuesday extended emergency rule across about one quarter of the country by three months over lingering fears of unrest, despite calls from rights groups for the sweeping powers to be lifted.

The state of emergency, imposed in April after mass opposition protests broke out in the capital, will be maintained in Bangkok and 18 other provinces — out of a total of 76 — but lifted in five others, officials said.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said there were still reports of activity by the anti-government “Red Shirts”, whose protests in Bangkok erupted into the country’s worst political violence in decades.

“The government still needs the tools to ensure peace, order and stability for a while,” he said.

The emergency law bans public gatherings of more than five people and gives security forces the right to detain suspects for 30 days without charge.

The authorities have used the powers to arrest hundreds of suspects — including most of the top leaders of the “Red Shirt” protest movement — and shut down anti-government TV channels, radio stations and websites.

Two months of mass anti-government rallies from mid-March by the Red Shirts, who were seeking immediate elections, sparked outbreaks of violence that left 90 people dead, mostly civilians, and nearly 1,900 injured.

Continue reading about Thailand’s Emergency Rule.

© AGENCE FRANCE PRESS, 2010

Photo by null0 flickr user

WIRED– The U.S. mission in Afghanistan centers around swaying locals to its side. And there’s no better persuasion tool than an invisible pain ray that makes people feel like they’re on fire.

OK, OK. Maybe that isn’t precisely the logic being employed by those segments of the American military who would like to deploy the Active Denial System to Afghanistan. I’m sure they’re telling themselves that the generally non-lethal microwave weapon is a better, safer crowd control alternative than an M-16. But those ray-gun advocates better think long and hard about the Taliban’s propaganda bonanza when news leaks of the Americans zapping Afghans until they feel roasted alive.

Because, apparently, the Active Denial System is “in Afghanistan for testing.”

An Air Force military officer and a civilian employee at the Air Force Research Laboratory are just two of the people telling Danger Room co-founder and AOL News ace Sharon Weinberger that the vehicle-mounted “block 2″ version of the pain ray is in the warzone, but hasn’t been used in combat.

[Update: “We are currently not testing the Active Denial System in Afghanistan,” Kelley Hughes, spokesperson for the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, tells Danger Room.

So I ask her: Has it been tested previously? She hems and haws. “I’m not gonna get into operational,” Hughes answers.

Hughes also disputes the assertion that Active Denial creates a burning feeling. “It’s an intolerable heating sensation,” she says. “Like opening up an oven door.”]

For years, the military insisted that the Active Denial System — known as the “Holy Grail” of crowd control — was oh-so-close to battlefield deployment. But a host of technical issues hampered the ray gun: everything from overheating to poor performance in the rain. Safety concerns lingered; a test subject had to be airlifted to a burn center after being zapped by the weapon. (He eventually made a full recovery.) And then there were concerns about “the atmospherics” — how the locals might react — when they learned that the United States had turned a people-roaster on ‘em. “Not politically tenable,” the Defense Science Board concluded.

I pinged Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s staff about the use of Active Denial in Afghanistan. I’ll let you know if I hear anything back. But a few months ago, a source told me that a representative from the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate was in Afghanistan. Did that mean Active Denial was about to be put into action? Nope, the source said. “She’s just out getting some atmospherics on the use of non-lethals.”

Update 2: “The active denial system is in the country,” e-mails Lt. Col. John Dorrian, a spokesman for Gen. McChrystal. “However, it has not been used operationally and no decision has been made at this time to deploy it.”

Photo: JNLWD

© COPYRIGHT WIRED, 2010