A Prospective IR Major With a Different Perspective

Fatah

Abdul-Fatah Soroush ’18, a four year international student from Kabul, Afghanistan, is a prospective international relations major at Roanoke College. He still has not declared, but feels confident that IR is the field of study for him. International relations, he says, is a combination of his favorite subjects: government, culture, and diversity. Indeed, an interest in those topics is essential for anyone studying global interactions. He intends to use this major to build up the knowledge necessary to make fine judgments about different government systems around the world, and to develop a comprehensive understanding of cultures.

Fatah hopes to bring a different perspective to the IR table in his time at Roanoke College.  His perspective may be one-of-a-kind because of his background, language, religion, and culture. Those values define him as a person and his nation as a whole, and they are very different values than most students at Roanoke College hold. American-Afghan relations have not been the best over the past decade. Fatah wants Americans to understand that the United States’ war on terrorism in Afghanistan has come to an impasse. The result of American presence in his country has left an unstable, corrupt, and fragile government that could fall apart easily. This is one of the main reasons he wants to study international relations: to understand and fix some of the problems that Afghanistan has fallen prey to, and to help amend American-Afghan relations.

Upon graduating Roanoke College, Fatah intends to work for the United Nations to gain experience with different cultures and issues, then he hopes to return to his country and do what he can in order to bring about real change.