LONDON: Former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Thursday explained the Taliban victory marched in Kabul, said the decision was taken in the “minute” and that he did not know he would go to the country until he took off.
Ghani told the BBC Radio 4 “Today” program that on the morning of August 15, 2021, the day Islamists took control of the capital and his own government was in disarray, he had “no feelings” that it would be his last day in Afghanistan.
But in the afternoon security at the Presidential Palace had “collapsed,” he said.
“If I take a stand, they will all be killed, and they are unable to maintain me,” said Ghani in an interview, carried out by former British defense chief of staff, General Nick Carter.
His national security advisor, Hamdullah Mohib, “was really scared,” Ghani said. “He didn’t give me more than two minutes.”
He said his instructions at first had flown with helicopters to the Southeast Khost city.
But Khost had fallen in alluding to Islamists who saw the provincial capital dropped throughout the country in the days before the withdrawal of international troops, was set for the end of August.
The eastern city of Jalalabad, on the border with Pakistan, also fell, he said.
“I don’t know where we are going,” Ghani said.
“Only when we departed if it became clear that we left.”
Since then Ghani is in the United Arab Emirates.
He has been very criticized in Afghanistan because it left, with Afghanistan now trapped under the strong rule of Taliban accusing him of leaving them – and taking millions of dollars in cash, he claims he was “firm” rejected again on Thursday.
The former World Bank official released several previous statements in his departure, admitted that he owed an explanation to the Afghans. Thursday was his first interview.
He said again that his first concern was to prevent brutal street battles in the capital, has been packed with tens of thousands of refugees who fled violence in the country.
And he said his decision to go was “the most difficult thing”.
“I have to sacrifice myself to save Kabul and to expose the situation of what it is: a cruel coup, not a political agreement.”
But even if he lived, he said, he could not change the results, which had seen the Taliban built their new regime when the country faced one of the worst humanitarian crises in history.
“Unfortunately I was painted with a total black,” he said. “It becomes a problem of America. It is not a matter of Afghanistan.”
“My life work has been destroyed, my values have been trampled and I have made a scapegoat,” he said.
Afghans have “right” blame him, he said. “I really understood that anger, because I shared the anger.”