From Military.com:
“US Woman Under Taliban's
Watch Won't Leave Kabul Without Her Staff and Hundreds of Rescue Animals”
(Charlotte Maxwell-Jones, founder
of Kabul Small Animal Rescue, plays with rescued dogs in Kabul, Afghanistan, in
2019.)
The head of an animal rescue
clinic in Kabul that has helped American troops bring home cats and dogs from
Afghanistan after their deployments is racing to evacuate staff and hundreds of
animals by the end of the month. Charlotte Maxwell-Jones, an American who
founded Kabul Small Animal Rescue in 2018, was recently told by the Taliban to
leave Afghanistan. But she doesn't intend to go until she's secured the
departure of about 125 people, including her employees and their family members,
and as many as 250 animals, she said. "We're not going to leave
them," Maxwell-Jones said in a phone interview Tuesday. She acknowledged
that she has little time left to organize the exit. U.S. forces are scheduled
to leave Afghanistan by Aug. 31 and it's unclear how many civilians will be
able to leave at the very end, when U.S. and foreign forces fly themselves out.
The rescue has received some
$700,000 in donations over the past week through online sites, grants and
smaller fundraisers. The money is intended to pay for a chartered flight or
flights, but logistical challenges remain that make coordinating with the U.S.
military and the Taliban necessary. The biggest hurdle is finding a third
country that will allow a plane carrying animals to land. All the animals Kabul
Small Animal Rescue is trying to evacuate have paperwork to enter the U.S., but
all of its Afghan staffers have applied for P1 visas, which require applicants
to be vetted in a third country. "We need a landing permit for our
animals," Maxwell-Jones said in an impassioned video message posted on
Twitter on Monday. "We need a landing permit because I think it's going to
continue to get more difficult." The video was posted the same day that a
group of about a dozen Taliban officials, including one holding a
rocket-propelled grenade launcher, showed up at Maxwell-Jones' Kabul residence
and told her to leave the country, she said. "I'm not armed. They just
came into my house," she said.
"They said NGOs would be
allowed to stay," she added, referring to a previous statement on the
status of nongovernmental organizations by the group. "I think everybody
believes that's a lie." Maxwell-Jones told the Taliban she was in the
process of leaving with her staff and needed more time. Taliban guards have
been stationed at her house since then and the group has agreed to escort her
and the staff to the airport in the coming days, she said. Tens of thousands of
Afghans desperate to leave the country have surrounded the Kabul airport since
the Taliban's lightning takeover of the city Aug. 15. The crowds make entry
difficult and pose another obstacle to the rescue group's evacuation. Yet
another hurdle is getting permission from the U.S. military to land a chartered
flight at the airport. Maxwell-Jones said that when she first called U.S.
officials and told them she wanted to evacuate animals, they dismissed her. "Now
people in the U.S. are getting their senators and state [representatives] to go
through it for us, so we're getting a bit more traction," Maxwell-Jones
said. But as of Wednesday afternoon, permission still hadn't been granted and
time was running out.
Despite the chaotic scenes at
Kabul's airport and fears that some Americans and at-risk Afghans may be left
behind, President Joe Biden has ruled out any extension of the deadline, The
Associated Press reported Tuesday. The Taliban also were adamant that the U.S.
withdraw by the deadline date at a press conference Tuesday. Even as they
prepare to leave, staffers at Kabul Small Animal Rescue have been collecting
dogs and cats left behind by others forced to flee. Maxwell-Jones founded the
animal rescue group in 2018 as a side project while working with the Heart of
Asia Society, a think tank working toward sustainable peace in the country. Her
organization rescues strays, provides veterinary services and helps ship
animals abroad for adoption. Maxwell-Jones said in an April interview that
two-thirds of the dogs she had shipped to the U.S. in the previous week had
been for service members, who befriended the animals while deployed in the
country.
Kabul Small Animal Rescue isn't
the only organization trying to evacuate animals from Afghanistan amid the
Taliban takeover. Nowzad, a Kabul shelter founded by British former Marine Paul
Farthing, has been campaigning to have its employees, their families and 200
dogs and cats brought out in what has been dubbed "Operation Ark." Some
have criticized the operation for putting "pets before people," but
Farthing has said the animals will travel in a hold where people can't go,
meaning that the main section of Nowzad's privately funded plane will be able
to carry more people out of the country. Maxwell-Jones responded to similar
criticisms about her organization's aim to help cats and dogs. "I realize
that it's not everybody else's passion, but these are private donations,"
she said. "I think that their lives matter, and I have put blood, sweat
and tears into this organization that's specifically for saving animals. And I
don't intend to stop now."
^ Please check out her GoFundMe
Page and write to Biden, the Politicians and everyone else you can think of to
help her help her staff and animals get out of Kabul before it is too late.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/kitty-evacuation-from-afghanistan ^
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