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19-08-2021
Bureau Report + Agencies
WASHINGTON/ KABUL/ ISLAMABAD DUBAI: Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, speaking from exile in the United Arab Emirates, said on Wednesday that he had left Kabul to prevent bloodshed and denied reports he took large sums of money with him as he departed the presidential palace.
Ghani has been bitterly criticized by former ministers for leaving the country suddenly as Taliban forces entered Kabul on Sunday.
“If I had stayed, I would be witnessing bloodshed in Kabul,” Ghani said in a video streamed on Facebook, his first public comments since it was confirmed he was in the UAE.
He left on the advice of government officials, he added.
The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs earlier in the day said that it has welcomed ousted Afghan president Ashraf Ghani and his family into the country.
“The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation can confirm that the UAE has welcomed President Ashraf Ghani and his family into the country on humanitarian grounds,” read a brief statement on the ministry’s website.
Ghani’s whereabouts had been the subject of much speculation since he fled from Afghanistan on Sunday, as the Taliban entered capital Kabul in the final stage to wrap up a 10-day lightning offensive across the country.
At the time, a senior Interior Ministry official said Ghani had left for Tajikistan. A Foreign Ministry official said his location was unknown and the Taliban said it was checking his whereabouts.
Meanwhile, foreign media reports on Afghanistan contacting the Interpol and asking it to arrest Ghani began to surface earlier today.
According to Forbes, the Afghan embassy in Tajikistan made the demand on charges of Ghani “stealing from the country’s treasury”.
It has also demanded the arrest of former Afghan National Security Advisor Hamdullah Mohib and Ghani’s Chief Advisor Fazel Mahmood, TOLO News said, quoting sources.
Afghan vice president says he is “caretaker” president
Meanwhile, Afghan First Vice President Amrullah Saleh said on Tuesday he was in Afghanistan and the “legitimate caretaker president” after Ghani’s departure.
Saleh told a security meeting chaired by Ghani last week that he was proud of the armed forces and the government would do all it could to strengthen resistance to the Taliban but the country fell to the Taliban in days, rather than the months foreseen by US intelligence.
In a series of tweets on Tuesday, Saleh said that it was “futile” to argue with US President Joe Biden, who has decided to pull out US forces.
He called on Afghans to show that Afghanistan “isn’t Vietnam & the Talibs aren’t even remotely like Vietcong”.
A video of desperate Afghans trying to clamber on to a US military plane as it was about to take off bore evoked a photograph in 1975 of people trying to get on a helicopter on a roof in Saigon during the withdrawal from Vietnam.
Saleh said that unlike the United States and NATO “we haven’t lost spirit & see enormous opportunities ahead. Useless caveats are finished JOIN THE RESISTANCE.”
Saleh, whose whereabouts were unknown, said that he would never “under any circumstances bow “to” the Talib terrorists He said he would “never betray” Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance who was assassinated by two Al Qaeda operatives just before the September 11, 2001, and attacks on the United States.
Ghani fled with cars and helicopter full of cash
Russia’s embassy in Kabul on Monday said that Ghani had fled the country with four cars and a helicopter full of cash and had to leave some money behind as it would not all fit in, the RIA news agency reported.
Russia has said it will retain a diplomatic presence in Kabul and hopes to develop ties with the Taliban even as it says it is no rush to recognize them as the country’s rulers and will closely observe their behavior.
“As for the collapse of the (outgoing) regime, it is most eloquently characterized by the way Ghani fled Afghanistan,” Nikita Ishchenko, a spokesman for the Russian embassy in Kabul, was quoted as saying by RIA.
“Four cars were full of money, they tried to stuff another part of the money into a helicopter, but not all of it fit. And some of the money was left lying on the tarmac,” he was quoted as saying.
Ischenko, the Russian embassy spokesman, confirmed his comments to Reuters. He cited “witnesses” as the source of his information. Reuters could not independently confirm the veracity of his account immediately.
President Vladimir Putin’s special representative on Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov said earlier it was unclear how much money the fleeing government would leave behind.
“I hope the government that has fled did not take all the money from the state budget. It will be the bedrock of the budget if something is left,” Kabulov told Moscow’s Ekho Moskvy radio station.
Earlier, President Joe Biden said Wednesday that US troops won’t leave any Americans behind in Afghanistan, even if it means staying in Taliban-controlled Kabul for longer than agreed.
In his first interview since the Taliban seized the Afghan capital, sparking a panicked exodus by foreigners and Afghan allies, Biden told ABC News that “chaos” had been unavoidable.
US leaders have said they are sticking to an August 31 deadline for removing the last troops and handing over the country to the victorious Taliban.
However, Biden said for the first time that US soldiers could stay longer if any Americans were still trying to flee. “If there are American citizens left, we’re going to stay to get them all out,” Biden said.
The US president did not explain how an extension would work.
The Taliban are currently standing aside as US troops fly in to secure Kabul’s airport and organize evacuations but the militants have full control of the rest of the city and are essentially able to decide who gets through and who doesn’t, while foreign forces are highly limited in their ability to maneuver safely beyond the confines of the airport.
Speaking as the small US force ramped up the frantic evacuations; Biden told ABC News there was never going to be an easy exit.
“The idea that somehow, there’s a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don’t know how that happens,” Biden said.
He added that the Taliban were currently assisting the US forces they’d spent so many years battling at least in helping foreign nationals to escape.
“They’re cooperating, letting American citizens get out, American personnel get out, embassies get out, etcetera,” Biden said.
However, “we’re having some more difficulty having those who helped us when we were in there” leave, he said, apparently referring to local Afghans who used to work alongside US and foreign forces and who now fear retribution.
In the interview, the president rejected criticisms that his administration had suffered a huge intelligence failure.
“It was a simple choice,” Biden said.
Referring to the near overnight collapse of the Western-backed Afghan government and army in the face of the advancing Taliban, Biden said he was convinced the already planned US exit had to proceed.
“The threshold question was, do we commit to leave within the timeframe we set… or do we put significantly more troops in?”
Asked what he’d thought when images emerged of panicked Afghans swarming airplanes and stowaways falling out of the aircraft after take-off, Biden said his reaction was: “We have to gain control of this, we have to move this more quickly. We have to move in a way in which we can take control of that airport. And we did.”
