The girl's body was lying between two mud-walled shacks. At least somebody had had the decency to drape the charred remains of her clothes over what was left of her. Going by the scorchmarks on the ground, it looked like she'd set herself on fire in plain view. When the flames died down, the villagers had probably just dragged her here out of the way and got on with their lives.

I nearly hadn't come over. I'd seen it all too many times before. But this one was different – even in the fading light, I thought I'd seen movement. And, besides, the girl with the cheeky grin lived in one of these huts. I always looked out for her when we came this way. The landscape might be cold, harsh and unforgiving, but somhow her smile always made me think that what we were doing was worthwhile.

The people who scratched a living in these mountains didn't have enough even to feed themselves, but that didn't stop them sharing it with us. I'd never spoken to the girl with the cheeky grin. It would have been taboo. But she'd run up a couple of times and handed me a sliver of watermelon or a cup of water. She couldn't have been more than fourteen.

Not so long ago, the cheeky grin had disappeared, as if someone had thrown a switch. 'Yes,' Ahmad had said. 'Now she have husband.' Apparently he was nearly three times her age and from another band of muj. Ahmad seemed to think her husband was having trouble teaching her respect.

She'd looked a little more desperate each time I saw her after that. The last couple of times, I'd noticed the bruises.

I squatted down by the heap of blackened material. There was a terrible stench of singed hair, burnt meat and kerosene, like the smell that hung in the air after the gunships had called.

I laid my AK on a rock and took off my Bergen. I lifted the charred clothes away from her head and gagged. The scorched skin was peeling from her face and neck. Blisters were still forming. The skin round her mouth stretched back to expose her teeth in a hideous parody of her cheeky grin. It wasn't how I wanted to remember her.