MONITORING (SW) – Former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani has said his trust in the international community, especially the United States and its allies, has been the biggest mistake of his presidency.
He told the BBC he fled the country because his security detail was “not capable” of defending him.
“On the morning of that day, I had no inkling that by late afternoon I would be leaving,” Mr Ghani told the BBC’s Today Programme. “[My] national security adviser and the Chief of the President Protective Service (PPS) came and said the PPS has collapsed.”
“If I take a stand, they will all be killed and they will not be capable of defending me.”
Mr Ghani said that he had hoped to evacuate Kabul for Khost, an eastern city on the border with Pakistan, but he was advised the city had already fallen to the Taliban.
“My instructions had been to prepare for departure to Khost. He [national security adviser Dr Mohib] told me that Khost had fallen, as had Jalalabad.”
“I did not know where we were going. Only after we had taken off did it become clear that we were leaving,” he said.
As Afghanistan fell back into the hands of the Taliban, Mr Ghani fled the country for the Uzbekistani capital of Tashkent, before claiming political asylum in the United Arab Emirates.
Despite being labelled as “gutless” by a former spokesperson, Mr Ghani stated on Facebook at the time that he had left “in order to avoid further bloodshed”, reported the Telegraph.
He doubled down on that sentiment in an interview released in September of this year, saying “leaving Kabul was the most difficult decision of my life, but I believed it was the only way to keep the guns silent and save Kabul and her 6 million citizens.”
Speaking on the Today Programme, Mr Ghani blamed the collapse of his government on the US, saying they had sidelined him during talks with the Taliban.
“It became an American issue, not an Afghan issue,” he said.
“I was painted in total black… we were never given the opportunity to sit down with them,” he added. “They erased us.”
Under the terms of the deal, the US agreed to reduce its forces and those of its allies, as well as providing for a prisoner swap – after which the militant group agreed to talks with the Afghan government.
The talks did not work and by the summer of 2021, with US President Joe Biden promising to withdraw the last troops by September 11, the Taliban were sweeping across Afghanistan.
What happened in the end, Mr Ghani said, was “a violent coup, not a political agreement, or a political process where the people have been involved”.
ENDS
