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Why no rating on this article? This is a trending topic but has not yet been rated by Snopes for reasons we’ll outline below.
In late August 2021, Snopes readers emailed questions relating to social media posts and statements made by talk radio host Glenn Beck, in which he claimed charitable organizations he founded airlifted thousands of people fleeing the Taliban. His claims came amid frenzied evacuation efforts after the U.S. military pulled out of Afghanistan, ending a 20-year war. Beck stated that his charities, The Nazarene Fund and Mercury One, evacuated 5,100 Christians and other vulnerable religious minorities from Afghanistan with the help of donors who, as of Aug. 24, 2021, gave more than $28 million. He posted pictures on Facebook showing people boarding planes. On Aug. 27, 2021, Beck posted to Instagram a picture of a plane on tarmac, along with a message stating it was one of the last planes to leave Kabul airport before a terrorist bombing attack on the same date killed 60 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members. Text accompanying the post reads: So, did Beck's organizations really airlift 5,100 Christians? We do not currently have enough information to ascertain whether his claim is true. We reached out with questions about the evacuations to The Nazarene Fund and Mercury One via contact forms on their websites, and tried reaching the Nazarene group's CEO, Tim Ballard, via his other nonprofit organization, Operation Underground Railroad. That group's website says it gathered the world's experts in extraction operations and in anti-child trafficking efforts to bring an end to child slavery. We didn't get a response from any in time for publication. A U.S. State Department spokesperson only told us in an email that the U.S. government wasn't directing privately organized charter flights out of Afghanistan, although the flights were being tracked and evacuees flown to third-party countries. The spokesperson didn't answer a follow-up question asking if the State Department tracked flights organized by The Nazarene Fund and whether it had any specifics about those flights. We attempted to locate independent accounts of Beck's nonprofit organizations' evacuations, but the stories we encountered were largely published by Christian-focused websites and The Blaze, a right-leaning broadcasting network founded by Beck. They rely heavily on statements by Beck and Ballard, without comments from independent sources that would verify or support their claims. Documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service indicate that The Nazarene Fund gained nonprofit status in February 2021. According to the organization's website, it is a separate entity from Mercury One, though the two groups work closely together. The number of Christians living in Afghanistan is unknown, however they are a tiny minority group. According to the Catholic website Aleteia, estimates of the number of Christians in Afghanistan vary from a high of 20,000 to possibly as low as 1,000. Snopes is waiting to hear back from The Nazarene Fund and Mercury One. We will update this fact check if/when we are able to provide more information. On Sept. 5, 2021, Newsweek magazine reported that six chartered planes set to evacuate 1,000 people, including about 100 Americans, out of Afghanistan were held up due to negotiations between the Taliban and the U.S. State Department. The planes were funded by Beck's Mercury One charity, per the Newsweek report, which cited two unnamed officials from a non-governmental organization (NGO). The article didn't name which NGO the officials were from. In remarks made in Doha, Qatar, during a news conference, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken addressed the issue of complications with charter flights and their efforts to fly people out of Afghanistan, although he didn't name any specific organizations. Blinken stated:
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