Did Hillary Clinton Charter Flights for Afghan Women?
Thousands of people have been trying to leave Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover in August 2021.
By Nur Ibrahim
Snopes Published 31 August 2021
Claim
Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been chartering private flights out of Afghanistan for at-risk Afghan women and children.
What's True
Hillary Clinton’s team had chartered one flight for Afghan women who were at risk according to a New York Times report.
What's Undetermined
It is not yet known if her team chartered more than one flight, and whether children were also on this flight.
Origin
As the last U.S. military flight departed Kabul on Aug. 30, 2021, it left behind tens of thousands of Afghans desperate to leave the country as the Taliban took over. Since the fall of the Afghan government in mid-August, many feared that a Taliban-held Afghanistan meant an end to numerous hard-fought rights for women and girls, which enabled them to gain education, employment opportunities, and more.
Many outside the country were desperately trying to aid in the evacuations of Afghan refugees, particularly at-risk women and girls. One such person was former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, according to a viral Facebook post claiming that she was arranging flights for Afghan women and girls in order to get them out of the country.
The most credible source for this claim came from a New York Times report on Aug. 19, 2021, which described evacuation efforts for local employees of The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. Numerous attempts to get them out failed, The New York Times reported:
One option emerged when Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, offered a few seats for Afghan employees on a charter flight her team was trying to arrange to help Afghan women at risk, according to three people briefed on the discussions. The employees did not end up taking the flight.
Many news employees did end up making it out of Afghanistan. But this snippet of news from the report—that Clinton had arranged a charter flight out of the country—went viral. While we know of the above flight, we don’t know if Clinton’s team had arranged for more, and if there were children on the flight as well.
Given that there is one credible report about a charter flight arranged by Clinton, we rate this claim as “Mostly True.” If we get more information, we will update this post.
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