Ghani blames agreement between US-Taliban for collapse of his govt

Afghanistan’s former President Ashraf Ghani has said he had no choice but to abruptly leave Kabul as the Taliban closed in and denied an agreement was in the works for a peaceful takeover, disputing the accounts of former Afghan and US officials. Ghani said in a BBC interview that aired on Thursday that an adviser gave him just minutes to decide to abandon the capital, Kabul. He also denied widespread accusations that he left Afghanistan with millions in stolen money. “On the morning of that day, I had no inkling that by late afternoon I would be leaving,” Ghani said and added that by that afternoon security at the presidential palace had "collapsed.

"If I take a stand they will all be killed, and they were not capable of defending me," Ghani said in the interview, conducted by former UK chief of defence staff, General Nick Carter. His national security adviser, Hamdullah Mohib, was "literally terrified," Ghani said. "He did not give me more than two minutes." "I did not know where we will go," Ghani said. "Only when we took off did it become clear that we were leaving." Ghani has been in the United Arab Emirates ever since. Ghani said his decision to leave was "the hardest thing"."I had to sacrifice myself in order to save Kabul and to expose the situation for what it is: a violent coup, not a political agreement."

Ghani did not address the rapid and swift collapse of the Afghan military in the weeks leading up to the Taliban takeover, but he did blame an agreement the United States had signed with the Taliban in 2020 for the eventual collapse of his government. That agreement laid out conditions for the final withdrawal of the remaining US and NATO forces ending the longest war of the US. It also provided for the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners, which Ghani said, strengthened the group’s forces.

Earlier this week, Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, an investigative reporting organisation with 150 journalists in more than 30 countries, listed Ghani among the world’s most corrupt leaders. Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko was named the most corrupt, with Ghani, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz among the finalists for the title of the most corrupt.