Stranded: Hundreds of journalists employed in US government centers left in evacuation in Afghanistan, the report says

While the White House and the Pentagon boast of evacuating more than 120,000 people from Afghanistan, it has emerged that hundreds of employees of the US Global Media Agency and their families were not among them.

Biden administration “Left more than 100 state-sponsored journalists plus their families after going through three weeks of hell," Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin revealed Tuesday night. His claim is based on information from people on the ground, a US senator who tried to help, as well as from the president of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, whose staff are among the stranded.

Officially “independent," USAGM is a federal agency funded entirely by Congress. The Voice of America (VOA) is also considered a government body, while the RFE / RL is technically one “Independent recipient” but also fully state-funded. According to Rogin, “600 or so” employees and contractors who worked for these organizations, as well as their family members, repeatedly tried to get out of Kabul after the takeover of the Taliban, but could not.

These Afghans went through one “Shocking ordeal” being “repeatedly” rejected by US troops at the gates of Kabul airport, and had their personal information handed over to the Taliban, Rogin wrote.

“It is discouraging that so many professional journalists employed by US-funded news organizations have now been left with their families," Senator Ben Cardin (D-Maryland), who was trying to help their evacuation, told the Post.

The planned US withdrawal became a mad confusion for the exits after the Taliban took over Kabul on August 14 and the US-backed Afghan government surrendered without a fight. As tens of thousands of people tried to get to the airport, RFE / RL President Jamie Fly said his organization was “Prepare for the worst case scenarios and focus right now on just getting our people to secure places where they can continue their work."

Fly now tells Rogin that the U.S. government “Consistently failed” to help his journalists who made several trips to the airport and used “Days and nights are waiting right outside the gates, but we never managed to get inside." At one point, Fly said, he was on the phone with senior military officials to try to get a group in, but no one passed the message on to the soldiers at the gate.

Acting USAGM chief Kelu Chao wrote to President Joe Biden on August 23 informing him that journalists were still unable to enter the airport. Two days later, 67 members of Congress also wrote to the President urging him to assist the USAGM staff.

According to Rogin’s article, RFE / RL had bought seats on a Czech charter two weeks ago, but their employees were turned around at the airport. Three other charter flights that were to take them to Spain last week never arrived in Kabul because of the August 26 suicide bombing that killed 200 Afghans and 13 U.S. troops at Abbey Gate.

Rogin also quoted an anonymous but allegedly senior State Department official as saying the USAGM group “Was until the last minute the highest priority," but the clock simply ran out. The State Department’s own local staff barely made the cut. The last five US flights left Kabul at 23:59 local time Monday without American civilians on board.

Employees in U.S. state-funded businesses were not the only ones left behind. Local staff for, among others, the US University of Afghanistan, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) also ended up stranded in Kabul. This is in addition to an estimated 600 Americans who were also not evacuated.

In his remarks Tuesday, Biden praised the Kabul air as one “Extraordinary success” that got 122,000 people out, and rejected criticism that the evacuation could have been handled better.

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