Former Afghanistan President Said He Has No Choice But Leave Kabul as quickly because the Taliban closes and denied a settlement for a peaceable takeover, disputing the accounts of former Afghan and US officers.
Former President Ashraf Ghani stated in a BBC interview broadcast on Thursday that an adviser gave him only some minutes To determine to go away the capital metropolis, He additionally denied widespread allegations that he left Afghanistan with thousands and thousands of stolen cash.
Ghani’s sudden and covert departure on August 15 precipitated a stir within the metropolis as US and NATO forces had been within the closing phases of their chaotic withdrawal from the nation after 20 years.
“On the morning of that day, I didn’t know I would be leaving until noon,” Ghani advised BBC radio.
His remarks conflicted with different accounts.
Former President Hamid Karzai advised The Associated Press in an interview earlier this month that Ghani’s departure would scale back the chance for presidency negotiators to achieve an Eleventh-hour cope with the Taliban, together with himself and Peace Council Chairman Abdullah Abdullah. Gaya, who had been decided to remain out. Capital.
After summoning the federal government’s protection minister, Bismillah Khan, the inside minister and the police chief, and discovering out everybody had fled the capital, Karzai stated he invited the Taliban to Kabul “to protect the population so that the country, the city in chaos.” Do not fall and undesirable parts who will in all probability loot the nation, will loot the retailers”.
But Ghani, in his radio interview with British General Sir Nick Carter, the previous chief of protection employees, stated he fled “to prevent the destruction of Kabul”, claiming that two rival Taliban factions had been influencing town. had been and had been able to enter and labor. Bitter battle for management. There was no proof on Taliban entry of rival factions talked about by Ghani.
The insurgent drive shortly took management of the palace and based on humanitarian support employees, who spoke on situation of anonymity as a result of they needed to talk privately, and who had been there on the time, the Taliban moved to defend their compound. went.
Nevertheless, the Taliban’s entry into the capital was met with widespread worry and a deep urge by many to flee their impoverished homeland, regardless of billions of worldwide funding over the 20 years that US-backed governments had been in energy.
Ghani denied widespread allegations in his interview that he left Afghanistan with a stash of stolen cash. John Sopko, the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, has been tasked with investigating these allegations.
Successive Afghan governments in addition to unbiased international and Afghan contractors have been accused of widespread corruption over the previous 20 years, with dozens of reviews by Sopco documenting probably the most severe incidents of corruption.
Washington has spent $146 billion on reconstruction in Afghanistan because the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, but earlier than the insurgents returned in August, the poverty stage in Afghanistan was 54 p.c.
Earlier this week the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, an investigative reporting group with 150 journalists in additional than 30 nations, listed Ghani among the many world’s most corrupt leaders.
Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko was nominated within the closing for the title of most corrupt together with Ghani, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz.
After being advised by his nationwide safety adviser Hamdulla Mohib that his private safety drive was not able to defending him, Ghani stated, he determined to go away. Stating that Mohib, who was “really horrified”, gave him simply two minutes to determine whether or not to go away, Ghani insisted that he was undecided if Kabul was able to evacuate. They may also be taken on a helicopter.
Ghani didn’t tackle the speedy and speedy collapse of Afghan forces within the weeks main as much as the Taliban’s eventual arrival in Kabul, however he blamed a deal signed by the US with the Taliban in 2020 for the eventual collapse of his authorities.
That settlement set the situations for the eventual withdrawal of remaining American and NATO forces, ending America’s longest conflict. It additionally supplied for the discharge of 5,000 Taliban prisoners, which Ghani stated strengthened the insurgent drive.
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With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
