A group of journalists working for United States-backed media outlets lost access to Kabul’s airport due to the Islamic State terrorist attack last week, according to a prominent State Department official.
“We were working on their safe evacuation just as the attack struck the airport perimeter,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters Thursday. “The operational environment changed markedly. Unfortunately, it stood in the way of our ability to bring these individuals to safety before Aug. 31.”
Their plight is one example of the chaos and disappointment that marked the effort to shepherd U.S. citizens and eligible Afghans through Taliban checkpoints and crowds of desperate Afghans in the waning days of the longest war in U.S. history. The scramble to escape as Taliban militants swept across the country led to a crush of people at the perimeter of the airport, punctuated by the bombing that killed 13 U.S. serviced members and more than 100 civilians.
“We have been working day and night, pursuing every available option, only to hit countless obstacles and roadblocks,” acting Voice of America director Yolanda Lopez said in a Thursday statement. “These men and women are part of our VOA family, and we will not be deterred by these setbacks. We remain committed to continuing to do everything we can to help all of our journalists and their families who wish to leave the country and get them to safety.”
‘HUNTED’: AFGHANS LEFT IN LIMBO STRUGGLE TO HIDE FROM TALIBAN AND FIND US SUPPORT
U.S. diplomats and military personnel struggled to identify people who had a legitimate claim to access the airport for evacuation, a senior State Department official acknowledged, and they sometimes had to exclude those supplicants despite their eligibility due to the danger of the evacuation scene.
“Those crowds that were outside the access points were on the verge of flipping to a mob at any given moment of any given day,” the senior State Department official said this week. “And the more that we and other nations went out and tried to pull individuals out of that undifferentiated crowd and bring them in, the closer to mob violence we came — every time.”
A senior Republican lawmaker cited their ordeal as to argue that State Department officials were wrong to tout their success in securing the evacuation of U.S. Embassy staff.
“It is absolutely disgraceful the U.S. State Department claimed they evacuated their local employees when in reality they abandoned hundreds of USAGM journalists and their families,” said House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, who used the acronym for the independent agency that operates the array of U.S.-backed media outlets.
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U.S. officials are working to plan an alternative escape route for the journalists and their families, a group that reportedly includes about 500 people.
“We will provide them tailored guidance, but that is not something we will provide to all of you,” Price told reporters. “And we won’t do that for their safety. And we won’t do that because it is tailored to them, and we are working on all possible options to effect their safe departure from Afghanistan.”
