The following is an excerpt from Defense One.
Project Dynamo’s latest set of evacuation flights got another 47 Americans and legal permanent residents out of Afghanistan last month.
Despite that success and others, the group has not been included among the larger #AfghanEvac coalition of more than 150 veterans groups that have been welcomed into U.S. interagency planning.
Thousands more special immigrant visa holders and at-risk Afghans, along with some Americans, are still in Afghanistan. But in mid-December, the Taliban halted U.S. government-chartered flights after coalition officials refused to provide seats on the aircraft to members of the group.
Project Dynamo founder Bryan Stern thinks the window of opportunity to help those allies is closing fast. They say they’re going at it alone because the larger group is taking too long to act.
This has made Dynamo unwelcome among the coalition, members of which cited concerns about its rogue approach.
Dynamo’s Stern is a Navy reserve officer and an Army veteran with multiple deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq. Unlike the other groups, Stern goes into Afghanistan himself to get the evacuees out.
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