‘Couldn’t Even Put on My Shoes’: Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani Details ‘Escape From Taliban’
In his second appearance after he fled Afghanistan on Sunday as the Taliban violently took over reins, Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani, who is currently being sheltered by the UAE government, released a video message late Wednesday night.
In the video message posted on his Facebook page, Ghani detailed his ‘escape’ from the Taliban. “I was evacuated in a condition where I couldn’t even put on my shoes,” he said.
“People who didn’t speak the local languages stormed the presidential palace and were looking for me, I was evacuated,” said Ghani, who faced global condemnation for fleeing at a time his nation was going through one of its worst crisis, in the over six-minute video.
“Events unfolded at a fast pace. I wanted to negotiate an inclusive government with the Taliban,” he said.
In his first comments after he left Afghanistan, Ghani in a Facebook post on Sunday had said he was faced with a “hard choice” between the “armed Taliban” who wanted to enter the Presidential Palace or “leaving the dear country that I dedicated my life to protecting the past 20 years”.
“If there were still countless countrymen martyred and they would face the destruction and destruction of Kabul city, the result would have been a big human disaster in this six million city. The Taliban have made it to remove me, they are here to attack all Kabul and the people of Kabul. In order to avoid the bleeding flood, I thought it was best to get out,” he said.
Earlier on Wednesday, the United Arab Emirates said that it has accepted Ghani and his family for humanitarian considerations. It quoted the country’s Foreign Ministry in a one-sentence statement.
V-P holds fort
Meanwhile, in Ghani’s absence, Afghanistan’s defiant former vice president, now self-declared ‘caretaker president’, is mounting a revolution against the Taliban saying that he will not surrender to them or flee.
Amrullah Saleh has reportedly retreated to the country’s last remaining holdout: the Panjshir Valley northeast of Kabul.
“I won’t dis-appoint millions who listened to me. I will never be under one ceiling with Taliban. NEVER,” he wrote in English on Twitter on Sunday, before going underground.
A day later, pictures began to surface on social media of the former vice president with the son of his former mentor and famed anti-Taliban fighter Ahmed Shah Massoud in Panjshir — a mountainous redoubt tucked into the Hindu Kush.
Saleh and Massoud’s son, who commands a militia force, appear to be putting together the first pieces of a guerilla movement to take on the victorious Taliban, as fighters regroup in Panjshir.
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