Posted on 05/20/2006 7:25:16 AM PDT by got_moab?
BRISTOL -- The president of Roger Williams University stands at the center of the school's leafy campus and gestures toward the three young Afghan women chatting under a tree a few steps away.
"One of them will lead their country some day," Roy Nirschel promises.
Which one? the women are asked.
Nadima Sahar's hand shoots up.
"Who will be president? That's me," she says.
"No, no," Mahbooba Babrakzai corrects her. "That's only if I lose."
What about Arezo Kohistani? What does she think?
"I think I will permit you to run," she tells her friends, feigning seriousness.
After waiting a beat, the three women throw their arms around each other and break into laughter.
It has been four years since Babrakzai, 21, and Sahar, 20, came to Roger Williams from Afghanistan on full scholarships from the Initiative to Educate Afghan Women, a program started by Nirschel's wife, Paula.
Kohistani, 24, joined her countrywomen a year later. Because she will finish all her classes in just three years, she, Sahar and Babrakzai will graduate together, at a ceremony this morning.
Although the women laugh when they talk about ascending to the highest position of power in a male-dominated, Islamic country, they aren't entirely joking.
Sahar does indeed harbor an ambition to be elected the first female president of Afghanistan. In truth, Babrakzai isn't quite as ambitious. She has her sights set only on becoming finance minister. Kohistani, too, would like to hold a cabinet-level position but, she confides, has yet to decide which one.
Their time at Roger Williams has strengthened their resolve to make those dreams reality.
"I grew up hating politics after seeing everything around me and in the media," Sahar says, "but now, I think we're all choosing this crazy field."
IT'S HARD to fault Sahar for the dim view she once had of government. For much of her life, her family's well-being was disrupted by the volatile politics in Afghanistan.
First, there was the Soviet invasion in the 1980s. Then civil war. After hard-line Muslims in the Taliban took control of the country in 1996, Sahar's family was forced into exile in Pakistan. So, too, were Babrakzai and her family and Kohistani and hers.
They were able to return to Afghanistan only when the Taliban government was overthrown by a U.S.-led coalition in late 2001.
Around that same time, thousands of miles away in Bristol, Paula Nirschel set about trying to do something to help war-torn Afghanistan.
Haunted by images of burqa-shrouded women she had seen on television, she decided to give them something they would struggle to get in their own country: a college education.
"This was the right thing to do for all Americans," she says. "We do higher education well, and I wanted to share that with them."
So she convinced her husband to host the first three women at Roger Williams in the fall of 2002.
In that first year, she wrote to hundreds of other educational institutions, asking for their help. Only two offered . Notre Dame College in Ohio and the University of Montana took one woman each.
But soon after it started, the initiative captured the attention of the national media, and it has grown rapidly since. Twenty Afghan women are now on scholarships at universities throughout the country. The program will expand to 30 students next fall, with a budget of $1.2 million.
The program also attracted the attention of the White House. After seeing Paula Nirschel on the Today show, First Lady Laura Bush invited her to a meeting to talk about the scholarships. Nirschel has visited the White House several times since then.
On the most recent visit, she returned the invitation, asking the first lady to come to Roger Williams to see Kohistani, Sahar and Babrakzai graduate. Mrs. Bush accepted, and she will be the commencement speaker today.
COLLEGE has not always been easy for the three women at Roger Williams.
When their plane touched down in New York after a two-day journey from Kabul in 2002, Babrakzai and Sahar knew little about the United States except what they had seen in Hollywood movies.
Everything seemed new, food especially, but even the American style of teaching was different from what was done in Afghanistan, where rote learning is encouraged.
They missed home terribly, so much so that another woman who came to Roger Williams with them returned to Afghanistan after her freshman year to be with her widowed mother.
By the time Kohistani arrived as part of the second class of scholarship recipients, Sahar and Babrakzai had adjusted well enough to be able to give her the tips she needed to survive in America.
Now, except for slight accents, it's hard to tell the women apart from their classmates.
But there are still differences. They are strict Muslims and pray five times a day. They don't drink or date.
They've worked harder than most students, rarely deviating from a routine that took them from their dorm rooms to classrooms to the library, day after day.
They're also probably the only students at Roger Williams who say they feel a need to excel in their classes not just for themselves or their parents -- but for their country.
ROY AND Paula Nirschel call the women their second, third and fourth daughters.
Like any proud mother, Paula Nirschel isn't shy about bragging about the women's accomplishments. One day last week, in the elegant sitting room of her home, she prodded them to talk to a reporter about what they've achieved at Roger Williams.
"Tell him what a fierce lawyer you are," she says to Sahar, a member of the school's mock-trial club.
And then she adds, "People are afraid of her when she's in the courtroom."
Sahar also did well in art, winning top prize in a schoolwide competition this past winter with a charcoal drawing representing Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting.
Her favorite class, though, was ethics.
"It's shown me how to respect other people's ideas whether I agree with them or not," says Sahar, a political science major.
She and Kohistani, who majored in business management, have been mentors to high school students in Newport and Providence and incoming freshmen at Roger Williams.
The women, with Babrakzai in charge, also started a Muslim student group last fall, taking home a prize for best new club on campus.
Babrakzai, a financial services major, couldn't make it to the meeting at the Nirschels' house. It was the week of final exams. She had to study for a marketing test that evening. By 3 p.m., when she did have time to talk, she still needed to finish a paper due three hours later.
"Is that going in the newspaper, too," she says, "that I'm slacking?"
Hardly. She and Sahar have both done well enough to be placed on the dean's list. Kohistani has earned straight A's and will graduate summa cum laude.
Homesick during her sophomore year and worried about her ailing father, Kohistani threw herself into classwork. She did so well that she realized she had the determination and work ethic to graduate early.
In the fall, she took seven classes, a high course load especially for senior year, and she took eight classes this semester.
"I'm happy I'll be done," she says, sounding a little relieved.
THE ONLY problem now, says Roy Nirschel, is letting the women go.
The women are ready to graduate. It's time to move on. They want to see more of the world.
They have gone back to Afghanistan every summer during college and have worked with government programs and in the offices of United Nations agencies and other non-government organizations.
The capital, Kabul, is bustling once again. The streets are safe. And despite an escalation in violence caused by remnants of the Taliban in the southeastern part of the country, much of Afghanistan is stable.
"We call it little Europe," Kohistani said. "Things are getting better."
ALONG WITH Sahar, Babrakzai and Kohistani, three other Afghan women in the program are graduating this month.
Those women -- one each at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, the University of Montana and Montclair State University in New Jersey (the woman who started at Notre Dame College transferred there) -- will return to Afghanistan to live after graduation.
One has already been promised a position in President Hamid Karzai's office, according to Paula Nirschel. Another is in discussions with the finance minister's office, and the third is still looking for a job.
The women at Roger Williams will also return to Afghanistan after they receive their diplomas, but their stay will be temporary.
They did so well in college that the Initiative to Educate Afghan Women is giving them the chance to go to graduate school, and they will return to the United States in the fall.
Again they will be on full scholarships. And again they will be together, this time at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst for two years to pursue master's degrees in public administration.
After that, they will go back to Afghanistan, right?
"Perhaps we'll get Ph.D.s later on," Kohistani says.
"No," Sahar interjects.
"No more education for a while after that," she says. "We're definitely going back home."
I guess these women didn't have the Taliban credentials to get into Yale..
What a difference five years, George W. Bush and the United States military have made for these women.
Look at this article from the BBC from May 2001.
Two questions:
First, does anyone think, that at this point, these ladies are going to have a political future in, and impact on, Afghanistan, given the country's conservatism?
Second, which colleges [aside from Yale and the Talibani] are offering any such programs for Afghan males, who might have a more immediate, and lasting impact on Afghan society. Or did we export Title IX to Afghanistan with everything else?
Ahh, aren't they just so precious!
First, does anyone think, that at this point, these ladies are going to have a political future in, and impact on, Afghanistan, given the country's conservatism?
Actually yes I do.
Flame away.
http://www.ikat.org/index.html
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