University of Richmond Student From Afghanistan Wants to be a Future Leader of Her Country
September 8, 2005
Muska Assad, a first-year student at the University of Richmond majoring in political science and business, is like most college freshmen: she has a dream. Hers, however, is probably unique. She wants to become the Condoleezza Rice of Afghanistan.
“I love Condoleezza Rice,” she said. “She is one of my favorite personalities.” Assad, who wants eventually to go to law school, prefers being minister of justice to being secretary of state, but she does want to be a strong woman leader for Afghanistan. Assad hopes to meet or at least communicate with Rice while studying here.
Assad, a native of Kabul, may become the Rice of her country, thanks to the university and a scholarship fund begun in 2001 that enables Afghan women to study in the United States. The Initiative to Educate Afghan Women is the brainchild of Paula Nirschel, the wife of Roy Nirschel, president of Roger Williams University.
As Mrs. Nirschel watched coverage following the events of Sept. 11, 2001, she was haunted by images of Afghan women in burqas and the Taliban’s restrictions against them—especially in education.
She knew she had to do something. She wrote letters to 4,500 universities asking for support. She conferred with the U.S. State Department. In August 2002 she launched IEAW.
That fall, four women came to America thanks to IEAW and host universities. Two of them attended Roger Williams. This year, Assad is one of 20 students in the program studying at colleges across the country on full four-year scholarships. The University of Richmond is covering all educational costs for Assad.
Assad, who moved from Afghanistan to Pakistan when she was 11, said life in her home country was “so hard.” She remembers rockets being fired, schools being closed.
Life in Pakistan was no picnic either. Finding jobs in a new country where they did not speak the native language was difficult too for her parents, even though her mother and father were both highly educated professional people—her mother is trained in law and her father in accounting, and her grandfather is a medical doctor.
The family did escape the oppressive rule of the Taliban, however, and Assad was able to continue her school education, as well as to take classes in English and computers, which were necessary for her to study in the United States. She always achieved A’s and B’s, she said. In November 2003, her family moved back to Afghanistan, and she started working with USAID in the Ministry of Finance in Afghanistan.
She had never been to the United States prior to this year, but she said she always has loved Virginia. “I don’t know why,” she laughed. “I just always have. It’s so natural.” She spent this summer in the home of a married couple who are both staff members at the university. Michele Cox and David Kitchen have been “like my own parents,” she said, and their new daughter is like her “American sister.”
She now lives in one of the university’s residence halls and is excited about being part of campus life. “The university’s people are so nice,” she said.
She is homesick, but as part of the scholarship, Assad will go home every summer to help in her country’s reconstruction. Like the other 19 recipients, she is committed to returning home after her studies are completed here to use her education to improve life for all in Afghanistan.