$6,500 for plane seat — contractor puts price on desperation as people look to flee Afghanistan

With just days left for US to completely withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, US defence contractor Erik Prince is selling seats on chartered flight out of Kabul as people scramble to escape Taliban.

Representational image | Passengers of an IAF special repatriation flight that is Delhi bound, at Kabul airport on 22 August 2021 | ANI

New Delhi: Nearly a fortnight since Kabul fell to the Taliban and Afghans and US allies seek ways to escape Afghanistan, an American defence contractor put up seats on a chartered flight for sale, a move the White House condemned for trying to “profit off of people’s agony and pain”.

Using the situation to make cash amid the chaos, Eric Prince, founder of the private military company Blackwater, said people could buy seats on a chartered plane leaving Kabul at $6,500 per head, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The American businessman and former US Navy SEAL officer, known for openly calling for the need to privatise the war in Afghanistan, said it would cost extra for transporting people trapped inside their homes to the airport.

Blackwater made headlines worldwide when its forces were convicted by a US federal court for killing 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square during the Iraq war in 2014.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki Thursday said: “I don’t think any human being who has a heart and soul would support efforts to profit off of people’s agony and pain if they’re trying to depart a country and fearing for their lives.”

As the 31 August deadline looms for the US to pull out all its troops from Afghanistan, the country and Kabul has been witnessing a mad scramble with people trying to escape the return of the Taliban regime.

Though President Biden reaffirmed his commitment to evacuation efforts, even if it extended beyond 31 August, the Taliban made it clear the deadline was a ‘red line’ and warned of consequences.

So far, the US and its allies have evacuated 88,000 people since 14 August, when the Taliban took control of Kabul.

Chartered flight organisers struggle to evacuate people

According to The Wall Street Journal report, western governments have alerted aid organisations that evacuation flights won’t continue after Friday (27 August), since the US military will need the time until 31 August to move its equipment and troops from Kabul.

Private rescue efforts have spanned from operations run by Prince to evacuation flights organised by former secretary of state Hillary Clinton through The Clinton Foundation. But efforts are starting to feel more heat as time runs out and hundreds still remain in the country.

Charter-flight organisers have been complaining of the challenging scene at the Kabul airport, where it is “impossible to get people into the airport in time to get on their flights”, the report stated.

With the Taliban controlling the city, getting people through the checkpoints and desperate crowds thronging the airport gates has been a major challenge.

According to several accounts mentioned in the report, some chartered planes flew out of Kabul with hundreds of empty seats since US troops refused to let their “manifested passengers” in.

Sayara International, a Washington-based development firm, had sought to evacuate 1,000 Afghan refugees to Uganda, where they were offered sanctuary. When the 345-seat plane left Kabul last week, it carried just 50 passengers as marines at the airport denied people entrance.

A flight scheduled to take 40 “vulnerable Afghan women” to Ukraine also left without its passengers because “US soldiers wouldn’t let them through”, despite waiting for two days, the report said, noting that 70 of the 240 plane seats were empty.

(Edited by Manasa Mohan)