By Jon Allsop, CJR

AUGUST 20, 2021

ON MONDAY, the day after Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, the publishers of the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal sent a letter to Joe Biden. They requested safe passage out of Kabul for Afghan colleagues and family members who were trapped there, “their lives in peril”; 204 of them were stranded on the civilian side of Hamid Karzai International Airport. Fred Ryan, the publisher of the Post, followed up with an email to Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser. On Tuesday, thirteen Washington Post employees and family members—twelve Afghans and one American—lifted off from the airport on a US military flight. By late Wednesday, the Times confirmed that 128 Afghan colleagues and family members had flown out to safety, too. Yesterday, the Journal said that more Afghan journalists were “on their way to safe passage” and promised details soon. The papers’ efforts have been time- and resource-intensive, requiring close contact with the Biden administration, as well as the government of Qatar and others on the world stage. (Per the Times, Hillary Clinton offered up a few seats on a charter flight that, in the end, were not taken.) “You’d have a plan at night,” Michael Slackman, an assistant managing editor at the Times, said, “and two hours later the circumstances on the ground would have shifted.” Continue leyendo →