Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello is pleading on behalf of the female guitar students who are trapped in Afghanistan after the U.S. completed its withdrawal on Monday.
Billboard obtained a copy of the open letter Morello penned as U.S. withdrawal efforts came to a close, with him begging for the rescue of those enrolled in the Girl with a Guitar program, which was kick-started by friend Lanny Cordola and teaches close to 200 students.
“I’m writing on behalf of some very special girls in Afghanistan who are in grave danger,” Morello penned. “[Girl with a Guitar] takes in street orphans and other girls that have endured significant trauma and uses music as a rehabilitation tool and means of working through their problems, their histories, and their hopes.”
“I’ve had the honor of collaborating with these wonderful kids. Since the Taliban takeover their school has been destroyed and the girls are in hiding. They are at extreme risk because they are widely known to have performed Western music and have been educated by a male American teacher,” Morello pleaded. “Anything you could do to help save their lives would be much appreciated.”
The students enrolled in the Girl with a Guitar program have remotely recorded with a variety of artists, including Morello, Sammy Hagar, Brian Wilson, Blake Shelton and many others. With Morello, the girls assisted in his and Kathy Valentine‘s cover of Eurythmics‘ “Sweet Dreams.”
Cordola, who’s is currently in Pakistan, is working to extract the rest of his students, 12 in all, their families and his driver from the country, saying “their lives are in peril.”
Donations can be made on Cordola’s Miraculous Love Kids website.
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