'I Couldn't Turn My Back'.(Brief Article)

It was a risky decision. After fleeing the Soviet war in Afghanistan 17 years ago, Farhad Ahad, 32, left a comfortable life in the United States last week to come home. Like hundreds of other Afghan professionals, Ahad, a former Enron employee, is betting that his devastated country is now ready to be rebuilt. He is still choosing between two solid job offers--chief of the Economic Affairs office at the Foreign Ministry and deputy at the Ministry of Mines and Industry. Soon after he stepped off a propeller plane at Kabul airport he received grim news. Haji Abdul Qadir, the newly appointed minister of Public Works and a vice president, had died in a hail of bullets earlier in the day. "I realized I'm probably a target as well," says Ahad. "But if I'm destined to die in Afghanistan, let it be."

It's not the first time Ahad has courted danger. At 15, he was nearly drafted into the communist Afghan Army to fight against the insurgent mujahedin. Instead, his parents arranged for the family's escape. He accompanied his mother and father on the treacherous journey east to Peshawar. They traveled by donkey and camel, guided by a smuggler. Near Jalalabad, a Soviet helicopter swooped down on the group. Ahad recalls the smuggler yelling, "Do nothing. Sit." The helicopter came in close, circled overhead, and then left. The gamble paid off. After two hard years in Pakistan, Ahad moved to the United States with his family. He was lucky to be absent for the brutal years that followed.

Life in the United States wasn't always easy either. Ahad and his family moved into a cramped two-bedroom apartment in Flushing, New York. His sisters worked in supermarkets and pharmacies. He was unhappy. "This is supposed to be the American dream. I don't like it," he recalls telling his family. Breaking with Afghan tradition, Ahad decided to leave home to pursue his education. "I felt I could make the adjustment easier on my own," he says. Soon he was juggling engineering classes at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a night job earning $5 an hour as a security guard. His ...