RIT on TV News: Shukria Amani

13WHAM-TV profiles Shukria Amani, an MBA student at Rochester Institute of Technology's E. Philip Saunders College of Business, who discusses her exodus from Afghanistan and the ongoing plight of that country and its people.

She survived the Taliban regime of the late 90s. Now an Afghan woman is in Rochester studying to improve -- not only her future, but that of her county as well.

In her lifetime in Afghanistan, native Shukria Amani saw more cruelty and felt more pain than most of her fellow students at RIT will ever know.

When you walked on the street you could see hanging hands...hanging feet, even hanging people, she said.

Amani, 51, said that under Taliban rule, many feared for their lives...especially women.

They used to beat a woman two, three, four timesand then the women were...to beg them, she said.

Amani said her sister was beaten at the public market because her ankles were visible through her stockings.

Amani said she was never beaten, although she could have been for secretly teaching accounting to women at her home. She was not allowed to do so at Kabul University as she did before the Taliban came to power.

I didn't want to stay home, she said. I'm educated. I thought, 'Why I don't use my education?'

Amani made her first visit to the U.S. in 2002 after American forces toppled Taliban rule. She instantly wanted to stay. I saw the cleanness and everything here, and I just loved this, she said.

But she returned to Afghanistan to care for her mother, who has since passed away. Now Amani is completing her MBA at RIT, and hopes to stay in America.

She said, Sometimes I think maybe from outside I can better help my people.

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