The former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani blamed the international allies, the United States in particular, for the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban. He defended his decision to flee the country, arguing that he did it to prevent the destruction of Kabul.
Ghani finally broke his silence in an interview with the BBC four months after he fled Afghanistan. He was speaking to the former chief of the British defence staff, Gen Sir Nick Carter, who was guest-editing BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Ghani also recounted the last moments of his flight from Afghanistan.
The Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan was swift and smooth; the aftermath is anything but. The Taliban were on their way to victory before Ghani’s self-exile, but his hasty departure ended the hopes of an orderly handover of power that might have kept some international aid flowing and capsized the plans for an inclusive government. Resultantly, international aid to Afghanistan has frozen, causing the economy to contract by a third. The country is stalked by famine and the poor Afghan folk hit by the disaster have now resorted to selling their children to meet ends.
When asked by his interviewer what he would say to the Afghan people who “blame you as their leader” for this catastrophe, Ghani said his biggest mistake was putting his faith in his international allies. “What they rightly blame me for, they have a total right to, I trusted in our international partnership and pursued that path”, he said. “All of us made a huge mistake assuming the patience of the international community would last.”
Ghani criticized the United States for keeping his government out of the peace talks with the Taliban. He said that the deals signed under Zalmay Khalizad, the US peace envoy and former US ambassador to Afghanistan, sacrificed the Afghan common folk to the Taliban for a smooth departure of American troops.
“Process-wise, outcome-wise, the responsibility has to clearly rest with the [American] team,” he said. “We were never given the opportunity to sit down with them [the Taliban]. Ambassador Khalilzad sat down with them; it became an American issue, not an Afghan issue. They erased us.”
Khalizad, however, went the opposite way, arguing in his interview with the Today programme that the Taliban’s victory was due to the “failure of Afghan leadership” and the Afghan troops that did not “resist hard” and laid capitulated to the incoming Taliban forces.
Ghani also defended his decision to flee Afghanistan in the wake of the Taliban takeover, arguing that he did this to prevent the destruction of the country.
Recounting the circumstances of his swift departure, Ghani said that when he woke up on August 15, he had “no inkling” that Kabul would fall to the Taliban before the end of the day. It was only after he was on the plane en route to Tajikistan that he realized that he was leaving the country.
Ghani said that the Taliban had promised not to enter Kabul, “but two hours later, that was not the case.”
“Two different factions of the Taliban were closing in from two different directions,” Mr Ghani explained. “And the possibility of a massive conflict between them that would destroy the city of five million and bring havoc to the people was enormous.”
Ghani said that he had to let the people close to him leave Kabul, including his wife who he said did so very reluctantly. His national security advisor also left, but Ghani did not – instead, he waited for a car to take him to the ministry of defence. But the car never came.
He said that his national security advisor returned, along with the chief of security who told that he took a stand, they would all be killed. Fleeing Kabul was the only option at their disposal.
“He did not give me more than two minutes”, Ghani said. He said that his instructions were to depart for the city of Khost – the largest city in southeastern Afghanistan – but he was told that Khost had fallen to the Taliban, and so had Jalalabad.
“I did not know where we will go. Only when we took off, it became clear that we were leaving [Afghanistan]. So this really was sudden.”