How an influencer and US army vets raised US$7mil to rescue Afghans

A file photo of hundreds of people near a US Air Force C-17 transport plane at the perimeter of the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. 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. — AP

ENGLEWOOD, United States: When 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”.