Nearly a quarter century ago, when she was a counsellor in the office of then United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Ms Wendy Sherman, together with her boss, used their gender to gain entry into the women's section of the refugee camps for displaced Afghans in the Pakistani border city of Peshawar.

The tales the two heard from the women housed there were horrendous, including of rape. One young woman had escaped the Taliban - which had recently seized power in Afghanistan - by jumping out of an upstairs window.