I met Malala in New York the night before the Nobel Committee decided to give the 2013 Peace Prize to the chemical weapons inspectors. She's young, and no one who hears her speak can doubt that she will make a difference in the world whether she gets a prize or not. But it's hard not to imagine those men sipping Aquavit in Oslo maybe missing the point that that young woman represents countless millions of abused, hopeless girls.

EVEN WITH THE Americans still in Afghanistan, the things happening every day to girls and young women under the Taliban defy belief. I met a an Afghani teacher, Razia Jan, in the audience at the event with Malala. A few weeks ago, Ms. Jan narrowly missed a bomb detonated at a major shopping center in Kabul. She said she never watches television to avoid bad news, but, when she got home, she turned it on to confirm that a friend and her children had died in the blast. Immediately after that report, the broadcast turned to a stoning in a town under Taliban control.

A girl, of age, had refused to marry an older man and married her younger lover instead. As Ms. Jan and the rest of Afghanistan watched, men in white robes stood outside a mosque, a figure draped in white was dragged to the middle of the square, and the men threw stones.

"These were not pebbles," Ms. Jan said, wiping tears. "They were bricks. And the men were laughing."

Here, in The New York Observer, you can read the rest of my thoughts on the future of teen girls under resurgent Taliban.