Rights groups have cited advances since then. In 2004, girls were formally guaranteed a right to an education under the Afghan constitution.
Human Rights Watch reports that nearly 2 million Afghan girls are enrolled in school (though only a small number advance past elementary school, rights groups have reported).
Literacy rates are up for girls between 12 and 16, according to a 2011 Oxfam report.
Across Afghanistan, infant mortality rates have dropped and life expectancy has risen, according to Unicef.
Women who once had to quit their jobs have gone back to work as doctors, lawyers and police officers, Oxfam said.
But stories of honor killings, poisoned wells at girls schools and disfigurements persist.
President Hamid Karzai enacted the 2009 Elimination of Violence Against Women law, intended to help reduce violence against women committed through practices deemed traditional, such as so-called honor killings.
But the United Nations reported in June 2011 that the violence against women law was being enforced in only 10 of 34 provinces.
Also, from March 2010 to a year later, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission registered 2,299 cases of violence against women that, according to the law, would be considered crimes.
Gul said she not only has to think about the trauma she's endured, but also she is still technically married to her attacker, and she fears it may not be safe to carry on living in Afghanistan.
"I think the punishment given by the court to these people worries me. The government is trying its best to find [my husband, convicted but on the run]," she said. "But if tomorrow he finds me, it's possible he could kill me.
"I want to go abroad," she continued. "If I sit here, they will find me. I want to go to school and study, to become a doctor or a prosecutor, so I can give punishment by myself to these sort of people. "
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