Afghan Girls Robotics Team Asks White Lady to Stop Claiming She Rescued Them From the Taliban

A lawyer representing the well-known Afghan Girls Robotics Team has despatched a cease-and-desist letter demanding that an Oklahoma lady cease claiming she personally rescued them from the Taliban, the Washington Post reported.

In latest weeks, the Taliban, an ultra-reactionary, armed Islamic fundamentalist group that was in energy from 1996 to 2001, has capitalized on President Joe Biden’s resolution to finish the 20-year U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and pull out all U.S. troops by the top of August. It has swiftly consolidated management of just about all the nation, save a U.S. garrison evacuating civilians on the airport in Kabul and small pockets of scattered resistance largely put up by ex-government forces making an attempt to keep away from abstract execution.

The Taliban is infamous for its earlier flip in energy, which was hallmarked by brutality and harsh oppression of ladies. That drew appreciable concern for the security of the world-renowned staff, which is made of ladies 12-18 who would by no means have been permitted to check engineering beneath the Taliban’s prior regime and have become a prominent example of how life had modified for the higher for a lot of Afghan girls after their ouster.

According to the Post, entrepreneur and Mars Explore board member Allyson Reneau stated that she first met members of the robotics staff at an area convention in DC in 2019 and continued to stay in contact. In a Today.com story with the unique clickbait-y headline “Oklahoma mom of 11 helps rescue 10 girls on Afghanistan’s robotics team,” Reneau described being unable to sleep contemplating the ladies’ potential destiny earlier than deciding she was “just going to fly to Qatar—like a leap of faith—and see what I can do.” Ultimately Reneau by no means flew to Qatar and ended up working with a contact on the U.S. embassy in Qatar to assist safe paperwork for the staff’s emigration.

That Today story has since received a major rewrite emphasizing that the ladies “rescued themselves,” that the robotics staff’s father or mother group the Digital Citizen Fund had been working with the Qatari authorities since early August, and that it was “unclear how much [Reneau and the embassy worker’s] efforts helped.” The Post story additionally studies that that Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ibrahim AlHashmi stated the Qatari authorities instantly coordinated the evacuation with the Digital Citizen Fund, that their ambassador to Afghanistan was the one to select the ladies up, and that Qatari officers had by no means heard from Reneau.

As the Post famous, although, the Today narrative was the one which caught on, with laudatory protection on CNN, an NBC affiliate in Oklahoma, numerous aggregated posts, the New York Post, and the Wall Street Journal—which went as far as to counsel Biden give her a job in command of the evacuation effort. (Gizmodo additionally quoted from an interview Reneau gave to CNBC in mid-August.) Reneau has additionally advised shops she’s going to proceed to work in the direction of rescuing different women nonetheless in Afghanistan and raised $50,000 for these efforts through Facebook. Here’s one alternative instance from the Post story, by which Reneau was interviewed by right-wing speaking head Glenn Beck:

She stated has been inundated with requests from Afghan girls since her media tour and is working with a former NASA common counsel and a Yale Law School staff, and has “an extraction team on the ground” in Afghanistan. “I’m not going to leave one behind,” she advised conservative talk-show host Glenn Beck on Tuesday. “The one thing I’m missing is planes.”

Beck, who has a corporation engaged on evacuating Christians and different non secular minorities from the nation, stated he might present the planes if she will get evacuees to the tarmac.

The Afghan Girls Robotics Team just isn’t blissful in regards to the narrative that’s constructed up and would really like Reneau to cease speaking to media.

“Continuingly recycling old pictures with the Afghan Girls Robotics Team, many of whom are minors, as validation that you had anything to do with their immensely stressful and dangerous escape not only impacts the safety of the girls but it also significantly affects the safety of the members of the team who still remain in Afghanistan,” Kim Motley, a Digital Citizen Fund board member who additionally serves because the staff’s lawyer, wrote in a letter to Reneau after midnight on Wednesday, in accordance with the Post. “It is highly unfortunate that you would use such a tragically horrible situation… for what appears to be your own personal gain.”

AlHashmi, the Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesperson, was even blunter. He advised the Post, “She took the agency from the girls and she claimed credit. The media let her be a White savior, claiming the girls were saved by her.”

AlHashmi added, “They came to global attention because of their work … so it should be about them and their courage and the work they have done. This should be the story that the media is focusing on, not a woman who is thousands of miles away who is claiming credit.”

Los Angeles-based Afghan neighborhood organizer Arash Azizzada advised the paper that “family members of the robotics team have been in touch with me, asking me for assistance with evacuating their extended family because the media coverage has now put them in danger and they are now fearing retribution by the Taliban.”

Reneau was unapologetic in her response to the Post.

“I’m above board, and if you don’t tell the truth, then you have nothing else to show for it,” she advised the paper. Despite the “blowback,” Reneau added, “The attention I’ve gotten has allowed me to help other Afghan women, so I don’t see any reason for me to stop.”