Former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani and his family, who fled the country after Taliban insurgents swept Kabul on Sunday, are in the UAE, say media reports.
According to CNN, the UAE ministry of foreign affairs confirmed this. “The UAE ministry of foreign affairs and international cooperation can confirm that the UAE has welcomed President Ashraf Ghani and his family into the country on humanitarian grounds,” CNN quoted a UAE foreign ministry statement as saying.
Ghani, in a Facebook post on Sunday, 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.
“Taliban have won the judgement of sword and guns and now they are responsible for protecting the countrymen’s honour, wealth and self-esteem. Didn’t they win the legitimacy of hearts? Never in history has dry power given legitimacy to anyone and won’t give it to them,” Ghani said.
Heavily armed Taliban insurgents swept Kabul on Sunday after a sudden and unprecedented collapse of the US-backed Ghani government.
An academic and economist, Ghani (72) was the 14th president of Afghanistan. He was first elected on September 20, 2014 and was re-elected in the September 28, 2019 presidential election.