Afghan students get a new start.

Byline: Jeff Wright The Register-Guard

When the Taliban arrived, economics instructor Shukria Amani didn't stop teaching. Instead, she went underground.

Meeting first at her home and then at a women's hospital in the Afghan capital of Kabul, Amani taught accounting to girls and women between ages 12 and 50. Under the Taliban regime that prohibited women from going to school or a job, she was at risk of jail - or worse.

But for Amani, there was no other choice.

"I couldn't imagine spending so long a time learning, and then being forced to sit home," she said Thursday in Eugene. "And I had to earn money for a living. I lived with my mother; I had to support her."

Now 46, Amani looks forward to returning to Kabul University to teach economics - to men and women alike. Toward that end, she is one of three Fulbright scholars from Afghanistan studying this summer at the University of Oregon's American English Institute.

After upgrading their English skills here, the three will enroll in nondegree programs at other American universities before returning to Afghanistan. The opportunity comes through the U.S. government's Fulbright Program, which allows top American students to study abroad and international students to study in this country.

The UO visitors include Ayub Khawreen, an idealistic 24-year-old who spent most of his life as a refugee in Pakistan. The political science student said he wants to pursue a job in government - not a highly respected or high-paying choice in his country - so he can work for the democratization of his homeland.

"It's not only me," he said. "A majority of youngsters want a free and peaceful country. They are fed up with war."

Abdul "Walli" Alemy, 34, was forced to abandon English literature classes at Kabul University after the Taliban arrived in 1996. He was working for the International Red Cross when the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks brought many Western journalists to Kabul. Serving as an interpreter for reporters, Alemy caught the bug - and now aspires to a career in journalism.

He and his colleagues say what strikes them most about Eugene is the cordiality of its residents - a quality they say is hard to find in a war-torn country like theirs. "Psychologically, people are depressed in Afghanistan," Alemy said.

All three students said the United States was right to attack the Taliban in Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Taliban "were such a savage people, and we suffered so much," Amani said. "If the United States didn't act, we would not be here today - especially me, as a woman."

She has misgivings, however, about the U.S. war in Iraq. "The people in Afghanistan were happy and appreciative of what the United States did, but for Iraq, I think it was a mistake," she said.

Amani was a student and then an instructor at Kabul University before civil war among warlords closed the campus in 1992. She and other women returned to the university, now in ruins, in 1994 and began teaching anew - only to find themselves shut out again when the Taliban arrived.

While underground, Amani and her accounting students would pretend to be patients or visiting family members when heading to the women's hospital for classes. Once, Amani was among eight women caught in the act of learning. She was jailed for four days - and freed only after United Nations staff intervened, she said.

A soft-spoken woman with an easy smile, Amani may not exude defiance, but her sense of birthright is strong. "I chose that from my childhood; I chose to have a higher education," she said. She often felt scared, she said, but cherished the role of trailblazer and example to other women.

Since arriving in the United States in June, she's already begun honing a new skill that was closed to her as a woman in Afghanistan: driving a car.

So what's her dream set of wheels?

"I think," she said, "I want an automatic transmission."