Washington: More than 500 journalists and their families who were employed by the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) were abandoned by the State Department in Afghanistan, senior Republican on the US House Foreign Affairs Committee Michael McCaul said.
“It is absolutely disgraceful the U.S. State Department claimed they evacuated their local employees when in reality they abandoned hundreds of USAGM journalists and their families,” McCaul said in a statement on Tuesday.
“Some of these journalists were given assurances by the Biden Administration that they would be treated as locally employed staff – but were not.”
McCaul said that only 50 staffers 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 networked global media agency that oversees five US-funded media outlets, including Voice of America and Radio Free Asia.
McCaul stated that pleas from his office to help one of the journalists, his wife, and infant child have been repeatedly ignored.
Republican Representative further called on President Joe Biden and the State Department to rapidly find ways to get these people to safety and away from the threats.
According to US media reports, some 250,000 Afghans eligible for expedited US visas remained in the country in the month of August when American forces could only evacuate about 20,000 daily.