Leaving Afghanistan was the only way to keep guns silent: Ashraf Ghani

Ashraf Ghani, the former president of Afghanistan who fled as Taliban fighters stormed into Kabul on August 15, has said that leaving the country was the most difficult decision of his life but the only way to keep the guns silent. The 72-year-old leader tweeted his side of the story on Wednesday.

Denying reports that he left Kabul with millions of dollars, Ghani, who fled to the UAE, said, “Leaving Kabul was the most difficult decision of my life, but believed it was the only way to keep the guns silent and save Kabul and her 6 million citizens.” The Twitter post came a day after the Taliban unveiled an interim government to run the war-torn country.

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Ghani, who fled to the UAE before the Taliban seized power last month, apologised to the people for leaving the country abruptly. “I owe the Afghan people an explanation for leaving Kabul abruptly on August 15 after the Taliban unexpectedly entered the city. I left at the urging of the palace security who advised me that to remain at risk of setting off the same horrific street-to-street fighting the city had suffered during the Civil War of the 1990s,” Ghani said.

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Ghani left Afghanistan as the Taliban entered Kabul on August 15. Three days later, the UAE’s foreign ministry said the country had welcomed Ghani and his family on humanitarian grounds.

Ghani offered his and wife’s accounts for a UN audit to prove that he had not indulged in any financial wrongdoing. “My wife and I have been scrupulous in our personal finances,” Ghani said. Ghani, who was president between September 2014 and August 2021 added that it was never his intent to abandon the people.

Praising all Afghans, and soldiers for the sacrifices they have had to make, Ghanis regretted that he had left the country in the same chaos as his predecessors. “It is with deep and profound regret that my own chapter ended in similar tragedy to my predecessors – without ensuring stability and prosperity,” he concluded.

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Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said America did not help Ghani to flee Afghanistan. Blinken told Afghanistan’s TOLOnews that the US did not help the former president to leave the country.

“No, I was on the phone with President Ghani the night before he fled the country. In our conversation … In our conversation we were talking about work that was being done in Doha, on the transfer of power, and in the absence of that succeeding, what he told me in the conversation the night before he fled is that he was prepared to fight to the death and in less than 24 hours he left Afghanistan. “So, no I certainly didn’t know about it. And we certainly did nothing to facilitate it,” Blinken was quoted as saying by the Afghan news outlet.