A group of Afghan journalists who worked for the New York Times have arrived safely in Mexico with their families after the country came to their aid, the newspaper is reporting.
Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard received a plea for help from Azam Ahmed, a former chief of the Times’s Kabul and Mexico bureaus, the article says.
The Times says that while the US has ramped up its evacuation flights, the American immigration system has struggled to meet the crisis.
Ebrard told The Times: “We didn’t have time in order to have the normal official channels.”
Mexican officials provided documents that allowed the Afghans to fly from Kabul to Doha, Qatar and on to Mexico, the report says.
The article says Ebard cited a national tradition of welcoming everyone from the 19th-century Cuban independence leader José Martí to German Jews and South Americans fleeing coups. He said Mexico had opened its doors to the Afghan journalists “in order to protect them and to be consistent with this policy”.
Mexico has extended its invitation to the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post for its Afghan journalists, according to The Times.
