Ashraf Ghani I abruptly fled Afghanistan to avoid being hanged like Najibullah

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If anyone was alleged to skills to repair Afghanistan, it had been Ashraf Ghani Before becoming president in 2014, Ghani spent much of his life studying the way to boost growth in poor nations. A Fulbright Scholar with a doctorate from Columbia University , he taught at a number of America’s elite academic institutions before stints at the planet Bank and United Nations . Later he co-wrote “Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World.”

Ghani fled Afghanistan on Sunday, and his whereabouts were a mystery before the United Arab Emirates announced three days later he and his family were within the Persian Gulf state “on humanitarian grounds.” The Russians claimed he left Afghanistan with four cars and a helicopter filled with cash, something Ghani denied during a video message released Wednesday. within the country he’s become a villain: his financial institution chief and key members of his administration have denounced him publicly. Efforts to succeed in him or his close aides were unsuccessful.

I had to maneuver out of Afghanistan to stop Kabul from bloodshed and destruction,” Ghani said within the video, adding that he left quickly with no belongings after security officials warned him that Taliban fighters wanted to execute them within the same as former president Mohammad Najibullah, whose body was hanged from a traffic signal by Taliban fighters in 1996.

“They were going room-to-room to seek out me,” Ghani said. “Their decision was this: Whatever happened 25 years ago was getting to be repeated. The president of Afghanistan once more was getting to be hanged ahead of the people’s eyes, and such a shameful history would have once more been repeated.”

In some ways , Ghani’s swift downfall reflects the broader failures of the US to impose a government on Afghanistan that had buy-in from a variety of competing power brokers with an extended history of fighting on the battlefield instead of at the box . Although he was a Pashtun, the country’s dominant ethnos , Ghani was seen as an outsider who lacked the political touch to unite disparate factions, and he became more isolated over time.
“Ghani wasn’t accommodating of the realities of how Afghanistan works,” said Kabir Taneja, author of “The ISIS Peril: The World’s Most Feared Terror Group and its Shadow on South Asia” and a fellow at Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi . “He either didn’t understand or couldn’t understand the warlords, who are essentially people representing ethnic fault lines.”

After the US invasion in 2001, Ghani returned to Afghanistan for the primary time in additional than a quarter-century, and served for 2 years as minister of finance in an administration led by Hamid Karzai. Afterward Ghani became a darling of the international aid world, giving Ted Talks, penning op-eds in major newspapers and speaking at conferences. At one point he was considered a candidate for UN secretary-general Following a failed bid for the presidency in 2009, Ghani linked up with several prominent Afghan politicians — including influential warlord-turned-vice president Abdul Rashid Dostum — to win the highest job five years later. But his victory was undermined from the start: John Kerry, then America’s top diplomat, flew to Kabul to broker a unity government that gave his main rival the position of “chief executive” — a title that appears nowhere in Afghanistan’s U.S.-modeled constitution In 2017, Ghani said he had “the worst job on earth” in an interview with the BBC. Still, he claimed that Afghan security forces had turned a corner against the Taliban and coalition forces would be ready to leave by 2021.

That clothed to be accurate, just not within the way he predicted. President Donald Trump’s administration started direct talks with the Taliban during a bid to finish America’s longest war, and shut Ghani out of the method . Then this year, after President Joe Biden set a withdrawal deadline for Aug. 31, Ghani resisted calls to step aside and permit a transitional government to require power because the Taliban made military advances Ghani pretended to be for peace, but actually he was in favor of war so as to stay in power albeit it cost lives and pushed the Taliban to revert back to a military option,” said Omar Samad, former Afghan ambassador to Europe and fellow at Atlantic Council. “The delay tactics ruined the probabilities for a deal that might have removed him from office but would have paved the way for a broad-based transition.”
‘I won’t flee!’

As the Taliban descended on Kabul over the weekend, Ghani told the folks that he would avoid the fate of former king Amanullah Khan, who abdicated and fled to British India in 1929 I won’t flee!” Ghani said at an occasion in Kabul on Aug. 4, raising his voice loudly. “I won’t seek shelter and that i are going to be at the service of individuals Yet because the Taliban blitzed across the country and marched to Kabul, Ghani appeared increasingly isolated. during a video released hours before he fled, Ghani involved the Defense Ministry to line up telephone helplines for citizens to call.
After Ghani fled, even his cabinet members were furious.

“They tied our hands behind our backs and sold off the country,” Bismillah Mohammadi, Afghanistan’s acting defense minister, said on Twitter after Ghani fled. “Damn to Ghani and his team In the video message on Wednesday, Ghani said he had been getting to negotiate with the Taliban to possess a peaceful transfer of power. He involved an inclusive government and said he was in talks to return to Afghanistan With Ghani out of the country, former president Karzai and other Afghan politicians are now leading discussions with the Taliban on fixing a replacement government. One thing they’ll easily agree on: Disdain for Ghani Ashraf Ghani has betrayed his own motherland, team and tribe,” Abdul Haq Hamad, a member of Taliban’s media team, told Afghanistan’s Tolo News. “Such treason will always be remembered.”