WASHINGTON: More than 500 journalists and their families employed by the US Global Media Agency (USAGM) were abandoned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Afghanistan, the Senior Republic at the US Foreign Affairs Committee Michael Mccaul.
“This is really embarrassing the US State Department claims they evacuate their local employees when in fact they left hundreds of USAGM journalists and their families,” McCaul said in a statement on Tuesday.
“Some of these journalists were guaranteed by Biden administration that they would be treated as local employed staff – but not.” McCaul said that only 50 staff from the US media agency were evacuated, thanks to efforts by US allies and not the United States government.
The United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM) is a global media institution network that oversees five US-funded media outlets, including American voices and Asian radio.
Mccaul stated that the request was from his office to help one of the journalists, his wife, and infant children had been repeatedly ignored.
“My office works with one of these journalists and tries for two weeks to get the attention brought into his case so that he, his wife, and his child can be saved – but our request is ignored,” he said.
Representatives of the Republican Party are then summoned to President Joe Biden and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to quickly find ways to make these people safe and away from threats.
According to US media reports, around 250,000 Afghans who qualified for accelerated US visas remained in the country in August when American forces could only evacuate around 20,000 every day.
The US completed the withdrawal of his troops from Afghanistan on August 30, ending one of the longest wars.
Within a few weeks, US forces and coalitions evacuated more than 123,000 civilians from Afghanistan and slightly more than 6,000 of them were US citizens.