By Jenna Russell, Boston Globe

May 21, 2006

BRISTOL, R.I. — Their ambitions are bold, and when they talk about their goals, they hold their heads high and look you straight in the eye.

Mahbooba Babrakzai, 21, intends to be the finance minister of Afghanistan someday. Arezo Kohistani, 24, wants to serve as an ambassador for her country. And Nadima Sahar is aiming even higher: The 20-year-old, whose family fled home to escape the Taliban when she was 10, said she will be the first female president of Afghanistan.

The three young Afghan women, who collected their diplomas from Roger Williams University yesterday, are among the first six graduates of an ambitious, four-year-old campaign to bring Afghan women to colleges in the United States.

Next year, 30 Afghan women will be enrolled at US colleges under the program, which requires them to return home after graduation. They will be among the first women of their generation to receive a college education.

Four years ago, when they arrived in Rhode Island, homesick and frightened, Babrakzai, Kohistani, and Sahar were much more timid.

“Their eyes were down when they came, out of respect. They were very quiet,” said Paula Nirschel, the founder of the Initiative to Educate Afghan Women and the wife of Roy Nirschel, Roger Williams president. “They were devastated to be away from their families. There was lots of sadness.”

Occupied by the Soviet Union during the 1980s, Afghanistan was wracked by years of civil war before the Taliban took control in 1996, closing schools for girls and barring women from working or showing their faces in public. Desperate to escape the repressive regime and seek education for their children, the families of Babrakzai, Kohistani, and Sahar fled to neighboring Pakistan.

Living there as refugees, the girls attended school and English classes, but the facilities were poor. Some took jobs to help support their families; Kohistani taught English and then worked for the United Nations.

When offered the scholarship at Roger Williams, she worried how her family would get by without her income. But her father insisted that she go, she said.

On the small, seaside campus, the girls soon were too busy to be sad. Sahar, who changed majors five times before combining political science, business, and philosophy, became a key member of the school's mock trial team. Kohistani mentored freshmen and earned top grades in her business major, winning memberships in three honor societies. Babrakzai majored in finance and politics and tutored classmates.

Together, the three women founded the Muslim Student Association to educate other students about their religion. The group has 25 members from countries including India, Syria, and France.

“The only way the world can be a better, safer place is if we get to know each other,” Babrakzai said. “We came here and we realized, we're all human, with families, hopes, and dreams.”

Funded by individual donors and participating colleges, including Simmons, Middlebury, and Mount Holyoke, the Afghan initiative covers all the students' living expenses and tuition. The women are required to return to Afghanistan each summer, and permanently after graduation.

During their summers at home, the young women have helped rebuild their country. Two years ago, with knowledge gleaned from her finance classes, Babrakzai helped an Afghan woman in Kabul write a business plan and win a $20,000 grant to open a clothing store. The business now employs 45 people, including other women who make clothing to sell there, Babrakzai said.

Five years after the US military helped oust the Taliban, in October 2001, the young women say they have been encouraged to see new houses and hospitals rising there, and boys and girls going back to school.

All three will attend graduate school next year at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where they won full scholarships. They plan to return to Afghanistan in two years with master's degrees in public policy.

The decision to stay away longer was difficult for Kohistani, whose father recently had a stroke. But he urged her again to pursue her education. “He says, `I don't want you to stop dreaming,' “ she said.

Their political aspirations have a larger purpose, Sahar said: inspiring other Afghan women to reach for lofty goals.

“Hopefully, we will be like a mother to future generations,” she said. “They will see that we had limited resources and used them efficiently, and they will be persuaded to do as we did.”