Lebanese-American Rula Saade Ghani Is Afghanistan’s First Lady

The new Afghan President Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai is married to the Lebanese Roula Saade since the early seventies of the last century.

The new Afghan president met his wife at the American University in Beirut in 1969 and graduated after 5 years. He was assisted in his study, by Dr. Fouad Saade, his wife brother.

After graduation, in 1974, Ashraf Ghani returned to Afghanistan to teach at the University of Kabul, meanwhile he won a scholarship to continue his studies at Columbia University in New York; he received his PhD therefrom and later he became a lecturer at the University of California and at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland from 1983 to 1991.

Since the Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, followed by the Taliban regime, Ashraf Ghani remained in the United States with his Lebanese Christian wife and two sons, where he held important positions in the United Nations bodies, including the World Bank, to the extent that he was among the candidates to succeed Kofi Annan as the organization’s Secretary General. In 2001 he returned to Afghanistan and became the Minister of Finance from 2002 to 2004.

Mrs. Rola, her daughter Mariam and her son Tariq hold the American citizenship. Mariam is a writer and Photographic artist globally renowned; she got a bachelor degree in comparative literature in 2002 from New York University, and a Master from the School of Visual Arts in the same year in New York; she works as a teacher in Kop reunion program as well as the Art and Public Policy program at New York University, and she won dozens of prizes.

As for Tariq, who is four years younger than his sister, he hold a Bachelor in information management software; he served as an adviser to his father when he was Minister of Finance and has many activities in his field of specialization.