ABU DHABI: Ashraf Ghani, the Afghan president who fled the country following a Taliban takeover, 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, who was speaking from exile in the United Arab Emirates, has been bitterly criticised 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.
Earlier in the day, the United Arab Emirates said that it is hosting Ashraf Ghani “on humanitarian grounds”, after he fled his country amid a Taliban takeover.
Ghani’s whereabouts had been unknown after he fled Afghanistan at the weekend.
“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,” the ministry said in a brief statement.
Until Wednesday, speculation had mounted that he had fled to Tajikistan, Uzbekistan or Oman.
The Taliban capped a staggeringly fast rout of Afghanistan’s major cities in just 10 days, achieved with relatively little bloodshed, following two decades of war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.
The collapse came as US President Joe Biden moved to complete the withdrawal of US troops. He admitted on Monday that the Taliban advance had unfolded more quickly than expected but defended his decision to leave, and criticised Ghani’s government.
US-led forces invaded the country following the Sept 11 attacks in 2001, in response to the Taliban giving sanctuary to Al-Qaeda, and toppled them.
This would not be the first time that the oil-rich Gulf country opens its arms to former leaders and their relatives, now persona non grata in their country.
In 2017, the emirate of Dubai hosted former Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra, who was sentenced in absentia to five years in prison.
Spain’s king Juan Carlos went into self-exile in the UAE in August last year as questions mounted over the origins of his fortune, and the UAE was Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto’s home during her eight years in exile before she was assassinated in her home country in 2007.
The UAE is one of three nations, including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which recognised the previous hardline Taliban regime, which ruled from 1996 to 2001.
This time around, the Taliban have sought to project an air of restraint and moderation.
Ghani was elected in 2014 on promises to remake Afghanistan.
But the 72-year-old may ultimately be remembered for making little headway against the deep-rooted government corruption that underwrote his downfall.
In his last years in office, Ghani watched as he was first cut off from talks between Washington and the Taliban that paved the way for the US exit from Afghanistan, and then forced by his American allies to release 5,000 hardened insurgents to lock down a peace deal that never materialised.
Dismissed as a “puppet” by the Taliban, Ghani was left with little leverage during his final months in the presidential palace, and resorted to delivering televised diatribes that did little to improve his reputation with Afghans.
Meanwhile, the Afghanistan embassy in Tajikistan demanded Interpol police to arrest Ashraf Ghani and his aides.
The Afghanistan embassy in Tajikistan has asked Interpol police to detain Ashraf Ghani, Hamdallah Mohib and Fazal Mahmood Fazli on charges of stealing public wealth so that funds could be returned to Afghanistan, Afghanistan’s Tolonews reported while quoting sources.
