Bibi Aisha

Who is Bibi Aisha?

Bibi Aisha is an Afghan woman whose mutilated face appeared on the cover of Time magazine in summer 2010. Her story first appeared in the Daily Beast in December 2009, which prompted doctors to write in offering to help her. The Grossman Burn Foundation in California pledged to perform reconstructive surgery on her and began organizing for her visa in the early spring of 2010. Diane Sawyer of ABC News also covered her ordeal in March 2010.

In a practice known as baad, Aisha's father promised her to a Taliban fighter when she was 12 years old as compensation for a killing that a member of her family had committed. She was married at 14 and subjected to constant abuse. At 18, she fled the abuse but was caught by police, jailed, and returned to her family. Her father returned her to her in-laws. To take revenge on her escape, her father-in-law, husband, and three other family members took Aisha into the mountains, cut off her nose and her ears, and left her to die. Aisha was later rescued by aid workers and the U.S. military. Some sources disputed the role of any members of the Taliban in her mutilation at the time it happened.