Shaharzad Akbar, a former chair of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission – an organisation targeted by the Taliban insurgency and now operating in exile – said social stigma meant such secrecy was common.

“The rare instance when [relatives] willingly admit to suicide is when they don’t want any member of the family to be accused of murder,” said Akbar, who is now executive director of Rawadari, a new Afghan human rights organisation.

Warnings about female suicides are only intensifying as the Taliban tighten controls on every aspect of women’s lives, most recently banning beauty salons.

In May, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, said he was “alarmed about widespread mental health issues and accounts of escalating suicides among women and girls”.

“They don’t have much room for expressing their protests and disagreements,” said Julie Billaud, an anthropology professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute and the author of Kabul Carnival, a book about gender politics in postwar Afghanistan.

Saved 84% of original text.