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

As the Post noted, though, the Today narrative was the one that caught on, with laudatory coverage on CNN, an NBC affiliate in Oklahoma, countless aggregated posts, the New York Post, and the Wall Street Journal—which went so far as to suggest Biden give her a job in charge of the evacuation effort. (Gizmodo also quoted from an interview Reneau gave to CNBC in mid-August.) Reneau has also told outlets she will continue to work towards rescuing other girls still in Afghanistan and raised $50,000 for those efforts via Facebook. Here’s one choice example from the Post story, in which Reneau was interviewed by right-wing talking head Glenn Beck:

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

Beck, who has an organization working on evacuating Christians and other religious minorities from the country, said he could provide the planes if she gets evacuees to the tarmac.

The Afghan Girls Robotics Team is not happy about the narrative that’s built up and would like Reneau to stop talking 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 also serves as the team’s lawyer, wrote in a letter to Reneau after midnight on Wednesday, according to 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 told 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 community organizer Arash Azizzada told 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 told 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.”