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Young Afghan woman is caught between promises
By Sarah A. ReidStaff writer

Rahila Muhibi was betrothed at 7 years old and a refugee by 15.
Today, when she accepts a diploma from Methodist University, the 24-year-old will arguably become the most educated woman from her tribe in Afghanistan.
In the past year, Muhibi has established a literacy program that is teaching young mothers in far-flung Afghan villages how to read and write.
Despite all her accomplishments, Muhibi’s future is uncertain. She wants to return to her country and fight for women’s rights after she earns a master’s degree in the U.S.
But the patriarchal system she wants to change back home is slowly closing in on her.
Muhibi’s father wants her to return immediately after graduation and marry her 25-year-old cousin.
“He is still waiting for me to marry him,” Muhibi said last week. “But my strategy is to finish my graduate school so that hopefully by then he gets tired of waiting and he marries somebody else.”
She left Afghanistan in 2003 with her father’s blessing and a scholarship to finish high school in Canada, she said. In her tribe, most young women marry in the ninth grade and start families, she said.
Muhibi — whose parents never had formal schooling — wants to shift that paradigm. She wants women to start thinking for themselves and put themselves and their families first.
The catalyst, Muhibi hopes, is in education and her 100 Mothers Literacy Program.
While a student at Methodist University, Muhibi organized the program to teach Afghan women with no formal schooling how to read and write. It started with an August 2007 fundraiser in Richmond, Va., Muhibi said. With a buffet of Afghan food as her backdrop, Muhibi pitched her idea at the private fundraiser organized by a friend. She raised $8,000.
Her program has been supported entirely by donations from individuals, she said. Most of the money has been raised from speaking engagements, she said.
She returned to Afghanistan in December for a month to get the program started in a relative’s village. In March, the first class of 105 mothers graduated, she said. They were taught by ninth-graders from a recently opened school in northwest Afghanistan.
“Women are the most vulnerable population in Afghanistan,” she said.
Muhibi is determined to be empowering, not diminutive. She has undergraduate degrees in political science and international studies.
But she still can’t get out of an arranged marriage.
Muhibi, a member of the Nikpai tribe, was promised to a cousin at 7 by her father, she said. Tradition dictates that she cannot break off the arrangement without hurting her family’s honor. The cousin, however, is free to marry another without stigma, she said.
“At home, once a man promises, then he has to do it,” Muhibi said. “No matter what it takes.”
For years, the dark-haired, almond-eyed Muhibi has told most of her close family that she has no interest in marrying her cousin, she said. In the few times she has talked with her betrothed, she told him to move on and find someone else.
But that, like most things Afghan women say to men, was taken as a joke.
Her betrothed comes from a family of nomad cattle herders, she said. As a boy, he moved to Kabul with Muhibi’s family. He currently works in telecommunications, she said.
Muhibi knows that a difficult conversation with her father is coming. He called her Thursday and was more insistent than usual.
“He actually told me, ‘If I am your father, you will listen to me and come home,’ ” she said. “He has been telling me that for a very long time, and I didn’t take him very serious. I thought he would listen to me.”
Muhibi wants to expand her literacy program into a nonprofit organization based in the U.S. Her brother, Ismael, is manning the operation in Afghanistan. Like most of the Afghan men in her life, he supports the project. But he doesn’t see the real value in it.
“It’s a joke to them,” she said.
After graduation, Muhibi will continue to look for a job. She plans to apply to graduate schools over the next year. She also plans to speak with her father.
“Somebody has to stop this, and somebody has to say, ‘No. I respect you still, and I love you still, and you are still my parents. But I don’t want to marry this guy,’” she said. “It should stop somewhere, and I am the one who I feel should do that.”