President Ashraf Ghani risked being killed: accused of corruption, his departure was the condition to avoid the bloodbath in Kabul
Few Afghans will regret their president who has just fled to Uzbekistan. An aristocrat, more appreciated in American academies than known at home, far from his people, sometimes opinionated, so much so as to often bewildered even his interlocutors in the allied coalition that until recently supported his government. Ashraf Ghani he had no escape: he had to escape and he did it even very late.
The risk that he would end up killed like Najibullah it was very real. In Kabul, the elders remember well the former Soviet-friendly president, whom the Taliban went to find in the United Nations headquarters in September 1996, then castrated him and hanged him from a light pole with dollar bills stuck in his mouth and in the pockets of bloody trousers. No, he had no choice but to flee. By now its popularity was reduced to a flicker. The collapse of the army also his fault. The biggest accusation of failing to control the prevailing corruption in all state institutions. His own bodyguard had become unreliable.
Who would ever be ready to die for Ghani? They wondered in Kabul. In truth, none. Whole provinces have surrendered without firing a shot. Ghani tried to imprison the officers who surrendered to the Taliban in exchange for safe conduct for safety. All useless, it was a river in flood. His appeals they have become pathetic. Don’t worry, my fellow citizens, I’ll take care of public order !, he repeated in the local media. But meanwhile he denied the reality. The Taliban advanced, social media showed the fallen cities one by one with videos and photos. But he repeated that everything was fine and the police were regrouping.
At one point his words became worrying: they could not be trusted, his lies were the clear mirror of the collapse. Ghani refuses to admit reality. He looks like an autistic who doesn’t listen to anyone. A problem for everyone, he argued a few days ago Tuesday Farhadi, a former presidential adviser, who, like so many, has distanced himself from the government. Eventually a block, a prisoner of his confusions. The Taliban has always maintained that a precondition for any orderly transition would be the abdication of Ghani. Now the game on other tables. His departure seems to avoid the bloodbath in Kabul.
August 16, 2021 (change August 16, 2021 | 07:33 am)
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