On the dusty tarmac of an airport in Northern Afghanistan, six planes have been waiting for days.
Thousands of Afghans seeking to escape Taliban rule have converged in the vicinity of the airstrip, located outside Mazar-i-Sharif, on the promise of a charter flight out of the country.
But since Sept. 3, the planes have been stranded. The final flight out of the sleepy airport left Sept. 2.
Into this taut and fluid situation stepped an unlikely personage: Glenn Beck, the far-right radio host who made a name for himself on the Obama conspiracy circuit.
As Afghanistan collapsed over the past months, Beck claimed to have raised more than $35 million to finance what he describes as a massive evacuation effort for Christians, American citizens, and vulnerable Afghans. Beck says he has done that via a Utah group he founded called Nazarene Fund, which has been working with another Beck-founded charity called Mercury One to organize charter flights.
Like many of Beck’s broadcasts on TheBlaze, the Afghan ones have been filled with a mix of exaggeration and invective, with most of the right-wing firebrand’s ire directed not at the Taliban but at “laughing” bureaucrats in the State Department and the Biden White House. With the six charter planes blocked from leaving Mazar by the Taliban, Beck has claimed that lollygagging diplomats and an uncaring Biden has left thousands of American citizens and vulnerable Afghans to the mercy of the new regime.
Beck’s bomb-throwing came as the State Department began to face mounting criticism from those involved in the charter flights, who saw Mazar as a means to quietly evacuate thousands of vulnerable Afghans and some American citizens in the days after the U.S. withdrawal. With global attention still focused on Kabul, people familiar with the evacuation effort said, Mazar offered a discreet escape route.
But as the Mazar window remained open in the first days of September, people involved said, the State Department struggled to develop consistent guidance on how private charters could secure approvals for the flights – a complicated process occurring in a near-warzone that involves vetting passenger manifests and getting destination countries to issue landing authorizations.
Meanwhile, Beck trained his megaphone on the delicate evacuation effort. At times, even Beck has admitted to being asked to tone down his “fat mouth,” as he called it, not always with success.
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