It seems like it just gets worse and worse in Afghanistan.

In what seems to be a not-very-uncommon tragedy, an Afghan woman set herself on fire outside a courthouse in Mehtaralam. A judge had just chastised her for seeking a divorce, and without much else to do instead, she doused herself in gasoline that she'd smuggled into the courthouse under her burka and set herself on fire.

The international press knows little about the details of the incident, except for the woman's first name — Pakhtana — and that she's 25. Back in December, we wrote about a similar case with a girl going through a divorce at the age of 11.

While Afghanistan has officially lossened the rules for women in the post-Taliban era, tragedies like this are occurring almost daily. It is so common in that part of the world that incidents like this one are barely making the papers.

I have to wonder — are these women doing this because they want to die? Or is it like the ever-increasing trend of cutting and self-mutilation that takes place among young women in the West? Experts say that the victims of this type of self-abuse do it not as a suicide attempt, but because the pain is so great on the inside that any kind of physical expression of it is a relief.

Pakhtana is in a local hospital, recovering from her injuries.