Erik Prince, the founder of the private military contractor Blackwater and a well-known figure in conservative politics, reportedly plans to charge $6,500 for a seat on a chartered evacuation flight out of Kabul, Afghanistan, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Prince said that this fee would cover the cost of safely transporting the passenger to the airport and onto a plane, with an additional fee if the person is trapped in their home. The Journal notes that “it remained unclear whether Mr. Prince had the wherewithal to carry out his plans.”
President Joe Biden earlier this week said that he would not extend the August 31 deadline for evacuation efforts for Afghanistan, meaning that even private efforts like Prince’s would be forced to cease, according to the Journal.
"We are currently on a pace to finish by August the 31st. The sooner we can finish, the better," Biden said on Tuesday. "Each day of operations brings added risk to our troops."
“There is no way with the numbers of people on the ground that we will be able to get everybody out by Aug. 31,” said Army veteran Alex Plitsas, who is involved in rescue operations currently underway in Afghanistan.
Warren Binford, a University of Colorado law professor who’s assisted in the evacuation efforts, told the newspaper that the situation is Afghanistan is “total chaos.”
He added, “What’s happening is that we’re seeing a massive underground railroad operation where, instead of running for decades, it’s literally running for a matter of hours, or days.”
“It’s a combination of tragic, surreal and apocalyptic,” added Stacia George, the director of the Conflict Resolution Program at the Carter Center who has also been working to assist evacuation efforts. “It’s so frustrating to get high-risk people up to the gate and have them risking their lives to go there and you still can’t get them through. It’s a disaster in slow- and fast-motion.”
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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