Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said on Sunday that he fled his country to avoid a “bloodbath,” acknowledging the Taliban’s victory.
President Ghani, who did not specify where he had gone, said he was convinced that “countless patriots would have died and Kabul would have been destroyed” if he had stayed in Afghanistan.
“The Talibans are against the game of glaives and legal rights and are present in charge of the honor, the possession and the self-preservation of the country”, at-il added a message on Facebook.
“Now they face a new historical challenge. Either they retain the name and honor of Afghanistan or they give priority to other places and other networks, ”continued the fugitive head of state.
Ashraf Ghani did not say where he was going, but the Afghan media group Tolo suggested that he had visited Tajikistan.
The Taliban entered the Afghan capital on Sunday and dozens of fighters seized the presidential palace, claiming victory over the Afghan government, according to television images. “Our country has been liberated and the mujahideen are victorious in Afghanistan,” an insurgent told Al Jazeera television station from the palace. The fighters seized the building after President Ashraf Ghani fled abroad, who admitted that the Taliban had “won.”
In ten days, the radical Islamist movement, which launched an offensive in May with the start of the withdrawal of US and foreign troops, took control of almost all of Afghanistan..
Abdullah Abdullah, who is leading the peace process, had previously accused Ashraf Ghani of having abandoned “people in this situation”. The former vice president was the first to announce that President Ghani had “left” his country, without specifying where he was going.
The departure of the head of state had been one of the main demands of the Taliban during the months of negotiations with the government, but Ashraf Ghani had clung to power. He was elected in 2014 and re-elected in 2019 on the promise to repair Afghanistan and end the corruption that plagued his country, but ultimately failed to deliver on either of these two promises.