Afghan shelter plan stokes controversy

A haven for Afghan women and kids

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• An Afghan official says the shelters would be "better controlled" under Afghan law
• An activist says the "government is packed with misogynist warlords"
• One girl is in a shelter after her stepfather tried to rape her

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Under the cover of darkness, a 9-year-old girl and her mother ran from their stone and mud home on the outskirts of Kabul. They feared the wrath of her stepfather.
"My father was beating me and my mother," said the girl, who to protect her identity will be referred to as simply Zarina. "He would insult my mother and sometimes wouldn't bring us food."
The last straw was an unwanted advance. Zarina, now age 10, said the man tried to rape her. She managed to slip past him and escape.
Zarina and her mother bounced from shelter to shelter before landing in a U.S.-funded women's home back in Kabul, the nation's capital.
Zarina's tale, however, is not unusual in Afghanistan, where women were persecuted under the Taliban regime from the mid-1990s until it was toppled in a U.S. invasion a couple of months after the al Qaeda terror network attacked the United States on September 11, 2001.