An American billionaire and former Navy SEAL is charging $6,500 per seat on a chartered evacuation flight out of Afghanistan, reports said Thursday.
Erik Prince, the founder of military contractor Blackwater, said the fee would cover entry to the Kabul airport and the flight out of the capital city.
United States and its NATO allies are mobilizing special rescue teams into Kabul's Taliban-controlled areas to spirit their citizens into the airport.
Many Afghans who thought the U.S. would protect them from the Taliban after having provided military support to Afghanistan's security forces in the past 20 years are now realizing they will be on their own.
Prince told The Wall Street Journal that it would cost more if people needed his help in getting out of their residences and to the airport with the Taliban insurgents in control of the Afghanistan.
But the Journal said it was not clear whether Prince had the ability of carrying out such risky rescue missions and flights.
The Journal said U.S. forces and private rescue operations are struggling to airlift American nationals, Afghans, and others ahead of an Aug. 31 deadline to pull out U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
Even as tens of thousands of Afghans who helped the U.S. and a large number of foreign citizens who are stranded, U.S. President Joe Biden is sticking by his plan to withdraw the remaining military personnel from Kabul's U.S.-controlled airport by Aug. 31.
A slew of private groups are helping evacuate Afghans and others. But some chartered planes are flying out of Kabul with empty seats because Afghans and foreigners can't pass through Taliban checkpoints at the airport.
"It's total chaos," Warren Binford, a law professor at the University of Colorado who's been part of various evacuation efforts, said in quotes by The Business Standard.
The White House slammed any attempts for private groups to profit off the evacuations, with Press Secretary Jen Psaki noting the Biden administration is pulling out tens of thousands of people free of charge.
