By Jessica Donati. When the United States first deployed forces in Afghanistan to fight the Taliban and hunt Osama bin Laden, Faizi was barely a teenager. Having grown up in a city on the front line of the insurgency, she has entered politics, the most dangerous arena of all for a woman in Afghanistan. Contesting meant becoming a potential target for the Taliban. Police insisted on giving her an armed escort home on the night of the ballot as the risk became more real.

WHAT happens to sexually active young men who do not see a female face for months at a time? In Kandahar, the home of the ultra punitive Taliban militias who have forced all Afghan women to disappear behind the veil, it seems feeble not to raise the issue. The city had a reputation for homosexuality long before the Taliban seized power two years ago.

Right in a big city like New York or Los Angeles? Try Kabul, where it's considered a crime for a woman to be seen in public with a man she is not engaged, married or related to. The stakes are shockingly high and the reality harsh: most girls born in Afghanistan will be married off as teenagers to men they are either related to or have never met.