Blackwater founder Erik Prince is offering an alternative arrangement to evacuate eligible Afghans out of Kabul, but it comes at a hefty price.
With President Joe Biden sticking to the Aug. 31 deadline to withdraw U.S. military forces, the United States has prioritized flying passport-carrying U.S. citizens from Afghanistan before other eligible refugees or special immigrant visa applicants. This has created a situation contributing to widespread desperation around the Hamid Karzai International Airport to escape following the Taliban‘s recapture of power.
Prince said he would offer seats on a chartered flight out of Kabul for $6,500 per person, as Afghans in the region realize their window of opportunity to flee the country is rapidly closing, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“There is no way with the numbers of people on the ground that we will be able to get everybody out by Aug. 31,” said Alex Plitsas, a U.S. Army combat veteran involved with the rescue operations in Afghanistan.
AFGHAN REFUGEES ARRIVE AT DULLES AIRPORT FOLLOWING KABUL EVACUATION
Prince said the fee covers entry into the airport and the flight. However, he would charge passengers more if they require transportation to the airport from within the capital city, as many Afghans have been blocked by Taliban security checkpoints in Kabul.
The news of his chartered flight offerings prompted some users on Twitter to criticize the move. Maria Abi-Habib, the bureau chief for Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean for the New York Times, said the operation was “exploiting people’s desperation.”
Prince, a former Navy SEAL and brother of ex-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, violated a United Nations embargo on Libya when he routed weapons and foreign mercenaries to a militia leader who planned to overthrow the country’s internationally supported government in 2019, according to a confidential U.N. report obtained by the New York Times in February.
Former President Donald Trump pardoned four of Blackwater’s former private security contractors who were convicted in the 2007 Nisour Square massacre of Iraqi civilians, resulting in 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians dead and at least 17 wounded. The previous administration said in December 2020 that “prosecutors recently disclosed — more than 10 years after the incident — that the lead Iraqi investigator, who prosecutors relied heavily on to verify that there were no insurgent victims and to collect evidence, may have had ties to insurgent groups himself.”
A group of U.N. experts decried the pardons as an “affront to justice.”
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The U.S. has evacuated approximately 82,000 people on military and coalition flights from Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport since Aug. 14, one day before the Taliban took the capital of Afghanistan and overran the former government, according to White House on Wednesday morning. The figure includes approximately 4,000 U.S. passport carriers.
