[Click here to read a related Mother Jones magazine article.]

The head nurse at Herat Regional Hospital’s Burn Unit guesses that she’s seen at least a thousand self-immolation cases since she started working here 13 years ago. Almost all of them are young women who’ve been beaten, starved, or forced into abusive marriages they can’t leave without also abandoning their children. But not all women who douse themselves in kerosene and light a match succeed in killing themselves. Some of the survivors are featured in this slideshow, along with photos of the Herat burn unit and Afghan prosecutor Maria Bashir. Click here to read a profile of Bashir, a woman risking everything to bring Afghanistan’s abusive husbands to justice.

Audio: “Two years ago, someone put a bomb in front of my house, and some of my bodyguards were wounded in the blast. One of my bodyguards lost his leg. They also kidnapped my bodyguard’s son because they thought he was my son.”

Audio: “We can tell whether someone is a self-immolation case as soon as we see them, but the families will say they were burned in a gas fire accident or something. They usually do not tell the truth.”

Audio: “When I burned myself, I didn’t understand what would happen to me.”

Audio: “I would love for my husband to come one day and say, ‘I will take care of you and our son.‘ Then no one would be able to say, ‘You don’t have a husband.‘ It’s a shame in Afghanistan for a woman to live by herself.”

Audio: “When I burned myself I didn’t feel the pain. It was when I came to the hospital that I felt like my whole body was on fire. I was screaming.“

Audio: “When I was 13, by force my family married me with a man who was much older, as a third wife of a man who was much older, maybe 70-80 years old. I faced many problems.”