From Military.com:
“Pentagon Denies It Left
Military Dogs Behind in Afghanistan”
The U.S. military on Tuesday
denied reports in the wake of its departure from Afghanistan that it had left
working dogs behind at the airport in Kabul, or that it had abandoned dogs in
cages. Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said in a tweet that U.S. troops did
not leave dogs in cages at Hamid Karzai International Airport when its last
flights took off Monday afternoon, East Coast time. Photos circulating on
social media showing 150 dogs in cages lined up at the airport are of animals
belonging to a group called Kabul Small Animal Rescue, the Pentagon said. They
were not military working dogs or under the care of U.S. troops. As of Tuesday
the dogs pictured were still in Afghanistan.
Kabul Small Animal Rescue was
founded by an American, Charlotte Maxwell-Jones, in 2018; the group helped U.S.
troops bring home cats and dogs they had befriended while deployed to
Afghanistan. The Taliban ordered Maxwell-Jones to leave the country after it
took over earlier this month, and she scrambled to get her employees, their
family members and up to 250 animals out as well, Stars and Stripes reported.
The Pentagon said that
Maxwell-Jones brought the dogs to the airport in kennels and asked troops to
get them on military evacuation flights. The military denied her request
because of customs prohibitions and the need to reserve all space on flights
for people needing evacuation. Maxwell-Jones then tried to charter a civilian
aircraft to pick the dogs up, but the plane never arrived, according to the
Pentagon. It added that troops moved the dogs from the runway to a compound
that had been used by the former Afghan army. Service members then let the
animals out into an enclosed area, where they remained when the final U.S.
flights departed. Maxwell-Jones stayed with the dogs to try to get them onto a
later flight, officials said.
Sunday afternoon, before the
final U.S. departure, the animal rescue group tweeted photos of some of the
dogs it was trying to help, with the hashtag #OperationHercules. The post went
viral. About an hour later, the group posted on Twitter again, urging people to
stop tweeting at the State Department and U.S. Central Command and saying its
team was handling the situation. The group's last full tweet came Monday
afternoon and urged followers to "PLEASE LET THE PROCESS WORK."
But by Tuesday, photos of the
canines continued to rocket across social media, along with claims they were
abandoned working dogs, prompting the Pentagon to issue a denial.
^ The US Military may not have
left Military-Working Dogs behind in Kabul, but they did leave these 150 dogs
behind. I understand the dogs not being allowed to fly directly to the US (due
to Customs Rules) but they should have been allowed to go to Qatar, Germany, Pakistan
or any of the other places that the Afghan evacuees were taken before they head
to the US. ^
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