Career
In 2005, she was appointed as Governor of Bamyan Province by President Hamid Karzai, which made her the first Afghan woman to become a governor of any province in the country. She previously served as Afghanistan"s Minister of Women"s Affairs as well as Minister of Culture and Education. Sarobi has been instrumental in promoting women"s rights and representation and environment issues.
She belongs to the ethnic Hazara people of Afghanistan.
Her last name is sometimes spelled Sarabi or Sarubi. Sarobi was born in Mazari Sharif and spent her youth traveling around the country with her father.
She later moved to Kabul to attend high school and study medicine at university. After graduating, she was awarded a fellowship by the World Health Organization and moved to India to complete her studies in hematology.
Her husband stayed behind in Kabul to care for his family.
She also worked underground as a teacher for girls, both secretly in Afghanistan and in refugee camps in Pakistan for Afghan refugees. In 1998, she joined the Afghan Institute of Learning and eventually became the General Manager of the entire organization. As governor, Sarobi has announced one of her focuses will be on tourism as a source of income.
However, Bamiyan continues to remain one of the poorest and most under-developed provinces of Afghanistan, with a litany of problems including high rates of illiteracy and poverty.
In 2008 Time magazine included her in its list of Heroes of the Environment (2008), partly for her work in establishing the Band-e Amir National Park of Afghanistan in Bamiyan.