In September 2012 in Kabul, Afghanistan, two young sisters, Parwana and Khorshid were killed by a suicide bomber meant for the American military. Their 8-year-old sister Mursal survived. There were seven Afghans killed including the two little girls. No Americans were harmed.
A couple of years later California muso Lanny Cordola found himself just over the border in Pakistan arranging a charity music event for ‘Peace through Music’. Somehow drawn to that Afghan tragedy, in a then undefined mission he kept reaching out to see if someone could introduce him to the family in Kabul and to meet the little girl who lost both of her sisters.
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When they finally met, Mursal drawn to Mr. Lanny’s (as she called him) guitar, asked him to teach her how to play, as did her eager friends… Cordola knew this was a way he could help. He could bring music to the kids.
He went into action mode, calling upon his glitterati of muso friends in California to help, and a year later officially started a music school for girls in Kabul, and a non-profit on their behalf. Initially named Girl with a Guitar, after Mursal, they became The Miraculous Love Kids, and with the school they could safely gather and practice every day. Hollywood actor Kiefer Sutherland donated 15 guitars, so they were off and running.
Over the next six years they moved around different buildings in Kabul, from a stark military barracks to above a supermarket, where the power would go off and an explosion, so they moved to another place… Always bare bones buildings, grassroots, but the girls would eagerly gather after regular school, and they were driven.
Life was relatively good. They were happy, they were learning guitar and English, and Cordola paid them to show up through the foundation he’d created. It encouraged them, and also discouraged them from having to sell sunflower seeds or beg on the streets.
Cordola had found a new mission in life, and he wanted to give them a global voice. The London Times had called him, flatteringly, the ‘guitar god of Kabul’. He enlisted his friend Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys, and virtually, over Zoom, they played and recorded “Love and Mercy.” It was 2018.
By 2020 they were singing the Eurythmics’ ‘Sweet Dreams’ alongside Kathy Valentine and Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine/Audioslave, a huge supporter of the girls. In May 2021 they released Steve Miller’s track ‘Fly Like an Eagle’ with Sammy Hagar singing into his iPhone. You may have seen the girls on Good Morning America or TMZ.
Their musical progression was outstanding, and they continued to make videos.
They didn’t realize it at the time, but things were relatively wonderful then, meeting in the rundown hot dusty rooms in Kabul, a couple of fans if the electricity was on, surrounded by broken windows, or at the national monument above Kabul where they gathered sometimes, and from other places they made their videos. Occasionally, a bomb would go off in the distance.
The girls didn’t understand the magnitude of what they were doing–it was all for fun. They had no idea who these musicians were that they were collaborating with. They just loved to play guitar. Cordola and his excellent network of friends had found global recognition for the girls. Remarkable considering.
Things in Afghanistan had been slowly progressing. Before they went barreling backwards.
In August 2021, Cordola took a plane out of Afghanistan into neighboring Pakistan to renew his visa in Islamabad. Unbeknownst to him, he’d taken the last plane out before the Taliban swooped in to take control of Kabul, after the US military’s sudden mass withdrawal.
The Taliban hate music. They really hate it. It’s a threat to their regime. No joy allowed. They started capturing, beating, and torturing musicians, and artists, going house to house. The girls’ lives were in danger. Cordola instructed them via video call from Pakistan to smash their guitars and went into overdrive on an evacuation plan for them to escape.
I managed to talk to one of the girls, Jellybean, as she’s affectionately called, briefly. The Taliban had taken over, she and the girls were hiding and waiting. Still sounding optimistic, and hopeful, her English surprisingly good from six years of learning song lyrics. She was one of the first girls to come to the Miraculous House as they call it. Suddenly banished from school in her birth country and having to go out in a face veil, and never alone in the street. She learnt the hard way, with a Taliban gun pushed in her face.
Getting out of Afghanistan was complex, yet Jellybean managed to and arrived in Pakistan by April 2022, the others soon followed via precarious smuggling routes, Cordola paying for their guides. Running for their lives, with the risk of getting caught by the Taliban and harassment from border guards at the other end.
Not exactly met with open arms, yet it was the lesser of two harms at the time. What could they do but try to carry on, hold together and wait. Pakistan having its own political unrest (increasing as I’m writing this).
The girls kept on with their music regardless. And Cordola continued raising funds through miraculouslovekids.org, paying for rent, expenses, medicine, food, and books.
By 2023 nine of the girls were living in Islamabad, Pakistan “three separate homes close to each other – six family units, nine girls and twenty family members.” Cordola proudly told me for an article I wrote for WONDERLUST.
The Miraculous Love Kids released their last video shot in Afghanistan before the Taliban takeover, ‘I Won’t Back Down’, with Blake Shelton singing from the comfort of his studio, probably in Nashville, and these immensely brave girls thousands of miles away, high up in the hot dusty ruins of Kabul, Afghanistan. Two visual panels in a duet, a song in harmony, together yet far apart.
Cordola’s tenacity in improving the girls’ lives and teaching them music grabbed the attention of a further slew of renowned musicians, who have jumped on board to help, from the enigmatic Matt Sorum (G n’ R, Hollywood Vampires), to Beth Gibbons of Portishead, Nick Cave, Nils Lofgren, Rami Jaffee, Beth Hart, Nancy Sinatra, Gilby Clark, Nandi Bushell, Kathy Valentine, Joe Walsh, Chad Kroeger from Nickelback, and more. Sia just sent them a video message after they covered her empowerment song “Unstoppable”. Roger Daltrey is working with them, and so is Peter Gabriel. They just premiered an incredible version of “Red Rain”.
Cordola managed to get some of the girls into the US last year, four of them, including Mursal and her family. Four went back to Afghanistan mid 2023, and a further four are in hiding in Islamabad in Pakistan, as he works to find a safe outlet for them.
Those in the US are now at the mercy of Trump’s agenda and his Executive Order of January 20, 2025, effectively halting all refugee admissions (including, shamefully, those under Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) for Afghans who assisted U.S. forces).
As of May 2025, Afghan refugees in the US are facing vast challenges due to the suspension of the Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP). It’s political bullshit playing with the lives of innocents. Children stuck between borders, their lives on hold, and just when they thought they were safe. They’d had a plan.
Lanny has been in Pakistan the past eight months with the girls and their families. They’ve had to go underground once again, the Pakistani police offering $20 to any local who gives up information on Afghans. The girls and their families are living in two rooms. Eighteen of them, families included. They can’t go out, they can’t go to the park, they can’t be visible. They’ve been in hiding for many weeks now that the Pakistani authorities are rounding up and sending Afghans back to their country and Taliban rule.
In April, 100,000 Afghans were deported from Pakistan – sent back to the Taliban and an unknown future. Pakistan has deported almost a million Afghans since 2023.
Around 10,000 are still in Pakistan, with US cases in limbo because Trump blocked them.
Shawn VanDiver, who heads #AfghanEvac, says it’s outrageous and stresses the need for the US government to honor its commitments to these refugees. He’s also appealed to the government of Pakistan to give the refugees more time. Asmat Ullah Shah, the Chief Commissioner for Afghan Refugees in Islamabad says that Afghans waiting for resettlement hold no legal status under Pakistani law.
The humanitarians in this story are the musicians who have stood up for these girls by sharing their music, talent and fame to uplift the situation.
18-year-old Yasemin, aka Jellybean, 16-year-old Zakia, 14-year-old Shukriya, and seven-year-old Uzra and their families sit in tenacious hope.
So many children in Afghanistan only know a life of extremes, running from extremists, of unbridled/perpetual violence by savages. Cordola’s hoping to get them asylum anywhere now, if not the US, then the UK, or Canada, other locations. He told me this morning from Pakistan, “Peter Gabriel has jumped in to do what he can, and is trying to get them into Belfast which is a UNESCO city of music—an organization called Beyond Skin is also helping, and the girls just released their video of “Red Rain”, and a new video with Roger Daltrey and Brian Wilson comes out next week”. He’s also in touch with the US Embassy in Islamabad, but they’re just taking orders from DC.
Cordola hasn’t been back to Afghanistan since he left. A friend went back and was arrested and thrown in Taliban jail.
Certain people have metaphorical blood on their hands. Trump’s suspension of refugee admissions has upended the lives of thousands of Afghan refugees and the communities trying to support them. In Connecticut, organizations like Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS) and Jewish Family Services (JFS) have been gutted—losing critical funding, laying off staff, and closing their doors just when they’re needed most. In Virginia and Maryland, at least 42 Afghan families have received eviction notices, left to face homelessness after the government withdrew the rental aid it once promised. And far from American shores, some 1,200 Afghans who risked everything to help U.S. forces are still stranded at a base in Qatar, waiting—abandoned in bureaucratic limbo.
Cordola told me the latest news this morning that a judge had ordered those who had been approved for entering the U.S. and who had a scheduled flight, were to be relocated there in the next two weeks. If Trump complies—which is anyone’s guess. His mind changes daily.
The Miraculous Love Kids—so aptly named for all they’ve been through—just released “Love and Mercy” with Roger Daltrey and Brian Wilson. While the situation in Pakistan is increasingly tense, with stifling heat, the odd earthquake, and now war with India, with bombs landing close to where the girls are staying, they keep on keeping on.
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