Taliban Holds Up Glenn Beck Group’s Planes; At Least 100 Americans Among Passengers – By Naveed Jamali (Newsweek) / Sept 5 2021
Six private charter planes seeking to evacuate 1,600 people—including more than 100 Americans—out of Afghanistan have been grounded by the Taliban amid negotiations with the U.S. State Department, an official with an NGO working on the evacuation told Newsweek.
The would-be passengers have yet to board the planes in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, which were chartered by the Nazarene Fund and Mercury One charity, both founded by Christian conservative media personality Glenn Beck.
Three other evacuation flights—two on a plane chartered by international development organization Sayara, and one by Goldbelt, Inc., an Alaska Native corporation—set to carry at least 19 Americans and an unspecified number of Afghans have also been grounded by the Taliban awaiting clearance, a second senior NGO official told Newsweek.
Funded entirely with private money, the Mercury One rescue mission chartered six planes—two Airbus 340s and four Boeing 737s—from Kam Air, the largest private Afghan airline, for eight evacuation flights to a Gulf state. The other three flights with Sayora and Goldbelt were also chartered from Kam Air but their intended destination is currently unclear.
