The Pentagon on Sunday activated a little-used emergency program to order six U.S. commercial airlines to aid the evacuation of Americans and Afghan allies from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, the New York Times reports, a rescue effort beset by growing chaos and logistical difficulties. This is only the third time the program has been activated since it was created after World War II. The 18 aircrafts mobilized under Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s activation of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet will not fly into Kabul, where security threats are reportedly escalating, but to U.S. bases in the Middle East. They will help transport “U.S. citizens and personnel, Special Immigrant Visa applicants, and other at-risk individuals” arriving from Afghanistan, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said in a statement.
Starting Monday or Tuesday, the planes will assist in moving people from these bases in the Middle East to Europe and the U.S., officials said. The Biden administration has struggled to manage the evacuation of U.S. citizens and allies in the aftermath of the rapid Taliban takeover. The problem is less the number of planes available, but the issue of getting people on them, according to the Times. “Ensuring that people can reach and enter Kabul airport” is “the main challenge we face,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said. People seeking refuge are reportedly hiding in their homes out of fear of retribution by Taliban militants controlling Kabul and the area around the airport, where the situation has deteriorated, as evidenced by the U.S. Embassy’s security alert on Saturday. U.S. forces control access through the airport gates. “But to get that far, even those who hold passports, visas, or an invite for evacuation first must get through checkpoint after checkpoint manned by Taliban fighters, who’ve been firing rifles and beating people back,” CBS News reports.
CBS is among the U.S.-based news organizations with first-hand knowledge of the evacuation challenges, a list that includes the Washington Post and the Times. Media outlets have scrambled to get their staff and colleagues associated with their organizations, as well as their families, out of Afghanistan in recent days. The publishers of the Post, the Times, and the Wall Street Journal asked the Biden administration for help in moving their Afghan colleagues out of the country on Aug. 16, prompting discussions “with officials at the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department,” according to the Times. “There were many plans and many efforts that either failed or fell apart,” said Michael Slackman, an assistant managing editor for the Times. “You’d have a plan at night and two hours later the circumstances on the ground would have shifted.”
Spokespeople for the Journal, Times, Post, and CBS and NBC News told CNN on Thursday that their reporters had left the country, an escape that for some required multiple attempts. Members of a group of more than 200 people connected to the Times, Post, and Journal last week tried to reach the airport’s tarmac, but returned home amid “a scene of mass confusion” and growing danger, per the Times. Local employees that were able to secure passage out of the country were aided by “a global rescue effort stretching from American newsrooms to the halls of the Pentagon to the emir’s palace in Doha, Qatar,” the Times notes.
In thanking “the many U.S. government officials who took a personal interest in the plight of our colleagues and the military personnel in Kabul who helped them make their exit,” Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger last week tacitly showed the advantages U.S. journalists might have compared to other correspondents, some of whom have been unable to leave due to confusing and shifting eligibility criteria. “What we’re seeing right now is a failure of policies and procedures,” American journalist Azmat Khan told the Intercept. Fixers and translators with less support and protection may get stuck in a country where their work for American outlets puts them in imminent danger by the Taliban. “Contracted workers are falling through the cracks,” Khan noted.
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