Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the war-torn country on Sunday as Taliban militants took over the presidential palace in Kabul — with Ghani later explaining that he took off to avoid clashes with the insurgents.
Abdullah Abdullah, the chairman of the Afghan High Council for National Reconciliation, referred to Ashraf Ghani as the “former president” and said he had left the country.
“The former president of Afghanistan left Afghanistan, leaving the country in this difficult situation,” Abdullah said. “God should hold him accountable.”
In his first comments since fleeing the country, Ghani wrote on Facebook that he left to prevent further bloodshed.
“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,” he wrote, according to the Guardian. “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.”
Ghani, who was posting from an undisclosed location, added, “It is necessary for Taliban to assure all the people, nation, different sectors, sisters and women of Afghanistan to win the legitimacy and the hearts of the people. Make a clear plan to do and share it with the public. I will always continue to serve my nation with an intellectual moment and a plan to develop. Lots more talk for the future. Long live Afghanistan.”
Ghani’s departure comes as Taliban fighters and government officials huddled in the Presidential Palace on Sunday for discussions about the transfer of power.
The Taliban are poised to once again take over Afghanistan after the militant group seized nearly all of the country in the past week, overrunning Afghan forces who received billions of dollars and training from the US military over the past 20 years.
The takeover was so rapid that the Biden administration had to dispatch about 5,000 US troops to evacuate personnel from the US embassy in Kabul, ferrying staffers and classified documents by helicopter out of the facility.
With Post wires
