Soldier, wife come to aid of abused Afghan girl

Sandra Bramble wanted just one Christmas present while her husband was stationed in Afghanistan. She asked Army Lt. Col. Jim Bramble to help save and a 16-year-old Afghan girl savagely attacked by the girl's 40-year-old husband.

With Nazia Hookum Darr now safe and recovering in a national military hospital in Kabul, Bramble received her wish. And Nazia has the gift of life and a future restored.

“We needed to help,” Bramble told TODAY’S Ann Curry on Thursday. “We need to help her regain her dignity. I mean, there’s just so many things that you see over there in Afghanistan that are not right. And so this is an opportunity to make a difference in somebody’s life.”

Mrs. Bramble, who actually learned of Nazia’s plight by reading a search-engine's email news alert about her attack, said it was paramount that the young girl get out of the local hospital she was in and not be at risk of encountering her husband again once she got out.

“She broke my heart,” she said. “I knew we needed to help her. We needed to do something for the Afghan women that have no voice. I’m sure she’s not the only one who is going through all of this.”

Abuse and recovery
Nazia was married off to her husband, Mumtaz, by her stepmother last year. In the three months from their wedding day to Christmas Day, her husband had cut off her nose and ears, poured scalding water on her hands and feet, broke 16 of her teeth and shaved her head.

Nazia told authorities that her husband suspected she was cheating on him.

"One night he hit me so much that I fainted,” Nazia said, according to the news account that moved Bramble to take action. “When I regained consciousness I found my head had been shaved. I cried so much, but he did not care.

Nazia

"One week later he knocked me down, bound my hands, and then broke my teeth with a stone. He also poured boiling water on my feet," the report continued. "After this I could not walk and was in a lot of pain, but he said I was only pretending.”

Sandra Bramble was moved to ask her husband to find Nazia in her local hospital in Zabul and put her in safer keepings.

“I knew that our military was doing a lot of these things for other people, so I mentioned it to him in the hopes that maybe something could be done,” she said.

Nazia acknowledged she also feared retribution from her husband, who is still on the run in Afghanistan.

So Bramble, commander of the Provincial Reconstruction Team Qalat, a joint U.S. Army and Air Force unit, coordinated with the Afghan government to obtain permission for military transport of the girl to the hospital in Kabul.

“She was being well-cared for and then we immediately started the process of seeing what we could do as far as reconstructive surgery,” he said. “She is now in Kabul, the national military hospital, receiving plastic surgery and possible prosthetics for her nose and her ears.”

“Hopefully after all of this process is over, then she’ll be fine. What we want to do is ultimately see if there’s going to be an opportunity for her to go to a boarding school there in Kabul.”

Mrs. Bramble said she hopes Nazia can “have the life she should have,” while her husband hopes she can one day look at herself and say, ‘I’m beautiful.’

For now, however, the lieutenant colonel is grateful to have a wife that is not only looking out for him, but for the people he’s protecting.

“Honestly, she’s a woman who cares,” he said.

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