| Listen to the interview with Jerica Arents and Mary Dean: |
Jerica Arents: What’s interesting, we heard many people who are in higher echelons of society [in Bamiyan Province in Afghanistan] say that “US forces need to stay, they are protecting us,” but ordinary people, ordinary Afghans, whom we talked to said, “We want the foreign forces to leave. We acknowledge that that very well might mean an outbreak of civil war, but we want to be able to see what the future is for ourselves.”
Mary Dean: They [Iranians] love the American people, but they said, “We don’t like your government”; and some of them said, “Or our govenrment,” you know, with the problems with political freedom over there. Especially the sanctions. So many people [in Iran] told us: “Please go back and end those sanctions, because they are affecting common people,” like the price of gasoline goes up, the price of food goes up, they can’t get parts for airplanes, sometimes even medical equipment — it’s a huge issue — like CAT scan machines and that kind of things.
Jerica Arents and Mary Dean are members of Voices for Creative Non-violence. This interview was broadcast by the “Worldview” program of WBEZ on 14 December 2010. The text above is an edited partial transcript of the interview.
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