Dozens of California students, parents stranded in Afghanistan after summer trip abroad
thehill.com/policy/international/middle-east-...Posted Aug 25, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC
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How the hell does a trip like this get approved when it was known NATO forces already started to withdraw before summer started?
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Not a school trip. Just school age kids who went to visit family.
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Because the Taliban advance caught everyone by surprise. No one could have ever predicted this to happen, and I don't blame them.
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Yeah, the “war will still be raging by the we get to the airport” logic doesn’t cut it with me.
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Ha ha ha. We are going into a warzone and the Americans are pulling out while we are there. Certainly the country will remain stable, and nothing will happen quickly to interfere with our travel plans.
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Funny....because the U.S. government has been telling people not to go and to get out if they are there since at least April.
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"Okay kids, we're going to an active war zone this summer!"
Can we get these people some kind of parenting award?
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Wypipo getting 2 adventurous these days
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"Hey Siri, find me good rates on a vacation package for my P.E. class"
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Holy shit.. were they really doing a month long trip to Afghanistan during covid? I can't even fathom how they were all aboard on that.
Edit: can't see the timeline on the trip but even a month ago it was obvious that it was time to GTFO.
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Who the fuck would go on "vacation" to Afghanistan? I could see a few university students who are archeology majors or middle eastern history majors doing a few weeks -- but "vacation?" What idiot thought this was a good idea? And did they not pay attention to "US withdrawing troops" and "Taliban taking over?" This is absurd.
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Lots of critics here, but for budget conscious travelers, the 0.012 to United States Dollar conversion means a lot of buying power. The average middle class soccer mom can live like a fucking war lord on pennies a day!
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What does conversion rate mean for anything? Conversion is just conversion, it means nothing if you don’t reference it to actual costs. Looking it up you are correct though, a meal for two is 500 AFN, which is $5.80, so yes very cheap there
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You can get a meal for 2 in Turkey for 50 TRY, around the same price.
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It can definitely be a cheap vacation with lots of thrills -- it's just the getting home part that is a pain.
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A do not travel and a leave the country straight away order was issued in April, I believe by the USA as well.
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Afghanistan is not Middle Eastern, get it right and don't throw that word at whatever you want! Afghanistan is in Central Asia. Kabul is closer to Bhutan than it is to Baghdad.
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Sorry sorry sorry!! My outrage at the idiocy of these people caused me to lose my mind for a second! :)
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lol it's fine, just good to know for the future cause I see this mistake a lot on Reddit by westerners
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Its interesting that amid Afghanistan being in the news all day and every day, I happened to be reading a novel about an officer in the British Army during the time of the Raj who was stationed in India when India bordered on Afghanistan and there were cross-border skirmishes. This was late 19th century. It was a little weird to see the same names in the daily news and in the novel I was reading!
Also interesting to note that in some ways, not a lot had changed. War lords, emirs, foreign armies, etc.
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Who the F goes to Afghanistan for summer vaca?!?!?
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stupid people, that's who
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Reading the linked article suggests this must be afgani-Americans who have been visiting family in Afghanistan not some weird school trip.
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*does a line of blow off the teachers desk* WHO WANTS TO GO TO AFGANISTAN FOR SUMMER CAMP
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Who the fuck takes a summer trip to Afghanistan... 🤦♂️
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I understand wanting to see their families, but going there 4 months after the US says they're pulling out, and in the middle of a pandemic no less is displaying some piss poor decision making.
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Someone should tell them they aren't really stranded, because Psaki says no one is stranded
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It's a beautiful hidden gem to be fair.
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Who in their right minds would take a school trip to Afghanistan? Complete, utter, MORONS.
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This must be from the onion.
If they are dopey enough to take kids there when we have been talking about pulling out for over a year - then they deserve to be stuck there.
Of all the places in all the world a school district signs off on students going to a war zone? LMAO…
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Miyashiro told the news outlet that the families traveled to Afghanistan on special visas for U.S. military service and that the school district was able to provide government officials with information on the families as they work to locate them.
Sounds like it might've been a ROTC-type program instead of simply a run-of-the-mill summer trip.
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They are Afghan-American families who were visiting and unable to get back home.
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Someone make it make sense.
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I just can't. Sorry.
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summer trip abroad
This is hillarious.
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Whose stupid ass idea was it to take kids to Afghanistan on vacation in the first place?
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In all due respect--who in the world would have sent an American School class on a summer trip to Afghanistan now (or anytime)?
Update: On rereading the article, it is unclear if this was a "school" trip or just various students who went there with family members.
Unless these students committed massive visa fraud, they're unrelated students who were there due to having parents who were servicemen who were in the country for official reasons.
This is just the school district attempting to make sure they're out. This is an extremely misleading article.
Huh?
Children of U.S. service people don't accompany their parents to active war zones.
Or are you saying these are children of Afghan servicemen who took their kids with them to an active war zone...Which would be equally batshit insane.
Take your child to work day is a time honored American tradition sir
I'm glad my opinion wasn't a hot take lol
Please let this be a normal field trip.....
With the Friz? No way!
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Headline misleading, article says the students and parents are from different schools in the district. With that in mind and the dilemma of Taliban control, my best guess is that these Californians are of Afghan descent that went to see their family for summer vacation.
You may be right....but the article suggests this was some sort of an "official" school sanctioned trip.
Those special visas sound like the same ones used for Afghan translators. Because like OP’s sentiment no ROTC is sanctioning a trip into an active war zone.
Looks like you’re right, there was no “school trip” the school district is just helping coordinate with parents since they know the families and are in contact already.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-08-24/students-from-cajon-valley-school-district-stranded-in-afghanistan
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/communities/east-county/story/2021-08-24/students-from-cajon-valley-school-district-stranded-in-afghanistan
They are Afghan-American families who were visiting and unable to get back home.
C-c-c-c-combo breaker
Haven't heard this remark in a decade lol
Did you seriously not bother reading the article that you yourself posted?
This wasn't some suicidal field trip; it was parents who work for the military taking their kids with them. Not saying that makes it a perfectly sound decision, but it's pretty different from how the click-baity headline presents it.
Gotta get that karma though -- post first, maybe read/ask questions later?
So... Parents who work for the military, going into what they already know is going to be a complete shit-show, took their kids with them?
Forget not perfectly sound, they were dumbasses and incredibly reckless.
They are almost certainly Afghans, going back to visit their country. They are in the US pursuant to some form of Visa.
My first impression was basically the same, but then again, I don't know their situations -- maybe there was no family back home that could be trusted to take care of the kids in the parents' absence; maybe the kids have special needs; maybe the covid situation back home made the parents weary of not being with them.
Again, I'm not saying it was a smart move, but I find it best to reserve judgment in situations like this.
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Article is fake news. It’s obviously the magic school bus got hit by an IED that took out Ms. Frizzle and Ralph. Now Biden’s abandoning advanced bus technology and a group of inquisitive and traumatized kids (They travelled through an anus, nobody is the same after that, NOBODY) to the Taliban. Classic coverup.
Kinda hot in these rhinos.
That quote does not answer the question as to whether the trip was organized by some groups, or whether there just happen to be a lot of Afghan families with military visas in that school district.
There must be more to the story than in the article, but the article implies it a school trip and the school system seems to be coordinating things with the parents.
Would you mind pasting the exact sections that imply that at all?
I read through the article a couple of times just to make sure I'm, uhh, reading the same article a lot of other commenters here are, and I didn't see any language that suggested any of that.
Also, Ctrl+F -> school trip -> no results, so maybe you should remove those quotation marks.
Corrections made.
What is the connection with "refugee families" mentioned in the article. Surely anyone who can go home to visit for the summer is not a refugee?
And why are these all from the same school district? Is the same situation true in other school districts across the country?
Right there with you. If you're taking high school kids to a foreign country maybe pick one that hasn't been embroiled in a 20 year civil war.
I'm Afghan and going to Kabul isn't (at least until last week) necessarily stepping inside a danger zone. Yes there are risks definitely, it was often the target of Taliban terror attacks, but it's not too bad as you put out. I myself visited several times in the past few years. It's in reality a lively city, lots of people men and women out and about in markets and shops, people going to school and work, etc. just as you'd expect in any large city. Kabul was firmly within government control until the recent events so you weren't really going into a dangerous war zone.
Also the recent events caught all Afghans by surprise, it happened extremely fast that no one could have thought. It's a reason why many are now stuck there.
This was the US government's official position on travel to Afghanistan as of April, 2021:
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No amount of rationalization can justify a parent's decision to willfully bring a child into a scenario such as this. None.
Wait.... You have been there several times during the pandemic?
No several times in recent years (last was in 2019)
I mean sure, if you're a pussy
It’s facts tho😭
But still. Why a war torn country?
They said they were going to visit their extended family.
Either way my first thought was, "well that wasn't very smart now was it."
Afghanistan was an opportunity to see a fledgling democracy as it slowly shifts from an authoritarian Taliban government towards a country that respects freedom and human rights, courtesy of 20 year American occupation.
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