Four Afghan girl guitarists escaped the Taliban. Will they be forced back?
Four Afghan girl guitarists escaped the Taliban. Will they be forced back?
Teenage musicians Yasemin, Zakia and Shukriya and Uzra, just 7, fled the repression of women in Afghanistan. Will a Trump order and Pakistan send them back?
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Zakia (left), American musician Lanny Cordola, Shukriya and Yasemine (right) pose for a photograph in Islamabad, Pakistan on February 14, 2025 [Rabia Mushtaq/Al Jazeera]
By Rabia Mushtaq
Published On 29 Mar 202529 Mar 2025
Islamabad, Pakistan – On a pleasant February afternoon in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, the sound of strumming guitars fills a small bedroom in a two-storey home that houses tenants from neighbouring Afghanistan. A flight of slippery marble stairs leads to the room on the first floor, where the bright rays of the sun enter through the window and bounce off the musical instruments, which belong to four young guitarists. These guitarists – 18-year-old Yasemin aka Jellybean, 16-year-old Zakia, 14-year-old Shukriya, and seven-year-old Uzra – are Afghan refugees who, with their families, fled the country after the Taliban returned to power in August 2021. Yasemin and Uzra are sisters, as are Zakiya and Shukriya. This is where Yasemin and Uzra are now living with their family. The bedroom is where the girls spend hours at a stretch practicing and jamming from Saturday to Thursday. Friday is their weekly day off. On the day Al Jazeera visits, the girls are busy tuning their guitars. They tease one another as they strum squeaky, off-key chords in between.
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Yasemin – aka Jellybean – sets the strings of her guitar before playing a tune at her home in Islamabad, Pakistan on February 14, 2025 [Rabia Mushtaq/Al Jazeera]
The girls learned to play the guitar at Miraculous Love Kids, a music school for children in Kabul set up in 2016 by Lanny Cordola, a rock musician from California. The girls, whose first language is Dari, also learned to speak basic English from Cordola in Kabul, where they attended regular school as well. Their world was turned upside down when the Taliban re-took power on August 15, 2021, after 20 years. The girls were afraid to step outside their homes following a spate of restrictions imposed on women. Cordola, who left Kabul for Islamabad the day the Taliban returned to power, began hatching plans to pluck his students and their families out of Afghanistan so the girls could continue to pursue their music dreams. After months of lobbying donors for funding and negotiating with agents who promised to help the families escape, Cordola finally managed to get seven of his students out, to Islamabad, in April 2022. Even as he continued to teach them there, Cordola worked towards eventually resettling them and their families in the United States, which had announced a programme to
Three of the seven girls were relocated to the US over the past few months. Yasemin, Zakia, Shukriya and Uzra – and their families – were supposed to fly on February 5.
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Yasemin (left), Shukriya, Lanny Cordola, Uzra and Zakia (right) smile for a photograph in Islamabad, Pakistan on February 14, 2025 [Rabia Mushtaq/Al Jazeera]
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A custom guitar pick featuring the band’s original track, ‘Girl with a Guitar’ [Rabia Mushtaq/Al Jazeera]
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Cordola shows on his laptop an unreleased music video of the girls singing a rendition of Sia’s track, Unstoppable, in Islamabad, Pakistan [Rabia Mushtaq/Al Jazeera]
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Little Uzra holds her small guitar as she practises a tune at her home in Islamabad, Pakistan [Rabia Mushtaq/Al Jazeera]
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Zakia, 16, from Kabul, plays her guitar while practising in Islamabad, Pakistan on February 14, 2025 [Rabia Mushtaq/Al Jazeera]
Escaping the Taliban – and waiting on Pakistan
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Yasemin reads from her diary of songs in the Dari language at her home in Islamabad, Pakistan [Rabia Mushtaq/Al Jazeera]
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Shukriya strums her guitar during a practice session at Jellybean’s house in Islamabad, Pakistan on February 14, 2025 [Rabia Mushtaq/Al Jazeera]
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But Cordola and the girls refuse to give up. The teacher has been reaching out to musicians and people with contacts in the US government to make the relocation possible. “I am sending out messages to people who can perhaps contact the upper echelons in the American government. The girls have collaborated with some of the most well-known musicians in the US and UK. We are not looking for extra favours, but to get them opportunities,” he says.
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Yasemin plays the guitar at her home in Islamabad, Pakistan [Rabia Mushtaq/Al Jazeera]
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The girls, Cordola adds, could also be relocated to other countries that are “willing to welcome them and provide legal and safe residence”, adding that a leading advocate for female Afghan musicians is interested in relocating them to Northern Ireland’s Belfast, a UNESCO-recognised city for its music. Most of all, the girls just want to stay together – in whichever part of the world will have them.“When I’m out of here, it is my dream for all the girls to come together and stand strong on our feet. I can’t do it alone. When all of us girls come together with Mr Lanny at the same place, we will do something,” says Yasemin. Fauzia, Yasemin and Uzra’s mother, says she is grateful to Pakistan for hosting them. But she knows that the family’s future hinges on Western governments giving them sanctuary soon. “Our lives were at risk in Afghanistan and even in Pakistan there is no peace. Whether it is the US or any other government, we request help for those whose lives are in danger,” she says. Until then, the girls have their guitars, their music and their dreams to live with. “Whenever I’m sad, I hold my guitar and forget all of the sadness,” says Yasemin. “It has changed my life.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2025/3/29/four-afghan-girl-guitarists-escaped-the-taliban-will-they-be-forced-back
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