Afghan Rape Case Is a Challenge for the Government KABUL, Afghanistan - Lal Bibi is an 18-year-old rape victim who has taken a step rarely seen in Afghanistan: she has spoken out publicly against her tormentors, local militiamen, including several who have been identified as members of the American-trained Afghan Local Police. She says she was raped because her cousin offended a family linked to a local militia commander, who then had his men abduct her around May 17. She was chained to a wall, sexually assaulted and beaten for five days, she said. A number of Afghan women who are victimized like Lal Bibi are later killed by their relatives because they believe the women have brought dishonor to the family. Extraordinarily, in this case, Lal Bibi's relatives brought the battered girl to Kunduz Hospital, near their home in northern Afghanistan, and filed a complaint with the governor. They hoped for official justice even while holding out the possibility that her death might be the only way to restore the family's honor. "I am already a dead person," she said in an interview, her voice breaking. "If the people in government fail to bring these people to justice I am going to burn myself," she said. I don't want to live with this stigma on my forehead. People will mock me if these men go unpunished, so I want every single one of them to be punished. In addition to stretching the bounds of conservative Afghan tradition, her plight is a test of the government's willingness to challenge the impunity of the many armed groups operating in the country, in particular the Afghan Local Police, which provides security in Afghanistan's rural expanses. These lightly trained and American-backed security forces are considered by the United States military to be one of the best hopes of improving stability in remote areas, even as human rights groups and residents have linked some to abuses, especially in northern Afghanistan. "She is very brave that she came out and talked to the media," said Nedara Geya, the head of the Afghan government's women's affairs department in Kunduz. She has set an example for the rest of the rape victims. Like a number of areas in the north, Kunduz Province has become a patchwork of armed militias with overlapping territories. In addition to the Afghan Local Police, who are attached to the government through the Interior Ministry, there are many freelance groups, as well as others financed by international forces to guard otherwise unsecured areas. In the past year, both official and unofficial armed groups in Kunduz Province have been involved in abuses. American military officials said that as far as they could determine, members of the Afghan Local Police were not involved in abusing Lal Bibi, saying they hoped that justice would be done in any case. However, a number of the local authorities, including the governor, the military prosecutor for Kunduz, as well as the Afghan Local Police director for the province, said the men who had abducted her and beat her were A.L.P. members. Because of that government connection, the provincial military prosecutor has decided to take up her case. There were differing accounts of whether the man accused of raping her was a member of the A.L.P., but all agreed that his brother was a local commander in the force. "All of the men are part of the first 300 A.L.P. who were trained by the American Special Forces," said the prosecutor, Gen. Mohammed Sharif Safi. It is not the first time that they have committed such a horrible crime. All of them are a bunch of illiterate and uneducated bandits and thugs who go around harassing people. So far, two people have been arrested in the case, including Khudai Dad, who is accused of raping Lal Bibi, and his brother, Sakhi Dad, who is an Afghan Local Police member, according to the Kunduz governor's office and the police officer in charge of the province's A.L.P. force, Col. Mohammed Shokur. Not yet detained, however, is the chief suspect in Lal Bibi's abduction, Cmdr. Muhammad Ishaq Nezaami, who disappeared shortly after she was grabbed. He has a troubled past. He was arrested six months ago on charges of attempted rape in a different case but was cleared, General Safi said, adding that he believed that powerful people intervened on Commander Nezaami's behalf. However, Colonel Shokur, the police official, said the charges were dropped in that case because of lack of evidence. An employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Kunduz, Afghanistan, and Habib Zahori from Kabul.