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How an influencer and army vets raised $7 mn to rescue Afghans
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Instagram influencer Tommy Marcus poses for a photo at a temporary office in Englewood, New Jersey on October 20, 2021. (AFP/Ed Jones)
W
hen Instagram influencer Tommy Marcus read that Kabul had fallen to the Taliban he sprang into action, without knowing that like-minded US veterans were also desperate to do something.
"I was more horrified and disgusted and just wanted to help," recalls the 26-year-old New Yorker, who is known to his 800,000 followers as "Quentin Quarantino."
With just a few clicks on his phone from his home in New Jersey, Marcus started what would become an extraordinary operation to evacuate hundreds of terrified Afghans.
In three days he raised $7.2 million and rallied to his cause retired soldiers and former diplomats, as well as experts in asylum law, humanitarian aid and airlifts from war zones.
It is a plotline worthy of a Hollywood movie: a combination of the power of social networks, rapid crowdfunding and the logistical efficiency of American veterans that led to the rescue of 565 Afghans.
AFP has spoken to several of the main actors of "Operation Flyaway," which was launched on August 17 and is ongoing, and reviewed contractual and budgetary documents related to chartered planes and arrivals in the United States.
Messages from Afghan women, children, LGBTQ people, social workers, journalists and interpreters to organizers begging for help to flee the country have also been read.
