Civilian volunteers with the private rescue organization Project Dynamo rescued 47 American citizens in December who President Joe Biden abandoned after the deadly Afghanistan withdrawal, reported National Review.
“Every one of them has been trying to leave since August,” said Bryan Stern, the organization’s leader, about the Americans he and his team rescued. “Grown men and fathers cried on my arm when we went wheels up.”
The corporate media forgot about the Americans that the Biden administration left behind as the story faded from the news cycle, and the federal government stopped further efforts to evacuate them from the Taliban-controlled nation.
So Project Dynamo and other civilian rescue organizations, including Flanders Fields and Task Force Argo, accepted the responsibility for bringing the stranded Americans home.
These groups consist of veterans and humanitarian activists with ties to Afghanistan but without connection to the federal government. They rely on private donations to operate.
“As long as we’re funded, we’re going to keep going,” Stern said about ongoing rescue operations as winter approaches.
Flanders Fields CEO Ben Owens said the federal government is not merely idling as Americans remain in Afghanistan, but is “actively impeding our efforts to find third countries to accept flights of Afghans.”
“All these countries are asking for is the U.S. Department of State, through an embassy in their country, to say, ‘Go ahead. We don’t care if you do this,” Owens said. “We’re not going to help you do it, but we’re also not going to hinder your effort to do it.”
Instead, the State Department has threatened to prosecute civilian rescue organizations for human smuggling charges if they bring refugees to safe third countries.
Project Dynamo has focused its efforts on bringing home American citizens and green-card holders, while other organizations have tried to get refugees who aided America’s occupation of Afghanistan.
Flights take weeks or months to organize, so rescue organizations have to sink ongoing funds into clothing, feeding, and sheltering the stranded Americans prior to their evacuation.
Jesse Jensen, an Army Ranger veteran who co-founded Task Force Argo, said he has had to fund his organization with his own money.
“It’s really demoralizing on the one hand, and it’s infuriating on the other,” said Jensen, who is running for the House in Washington’s 8th District.
“We’ve made a promise to some of these people that we were going to get them out,” he continued. “If you serve with the American government, we will extricate you, we will provide you with an immigrant visa that you will be able to come to the United States and live. And we’re not honoring that.”
