Ashraf Ghani says he left Kabul to avoid bloodshed, backs Taliban-Karzai talks

Abu Dhabi [UAE], August 19 (ANI): Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who left the country on Sunday as the Taliban entered Kabul, said in a video message on Wednesday that he left the country in an attempt to avoid bloodshed and backed the recent talks between the terror group and former Afghan president Hamid Karzai to stabilise the country, a media report said.

“I didn’t want the bloodshed to commence in Kabul as it had in Syria and Yemen. So I decided to go, to leave Kabul,” CNN quoted Ghani as saying on Wednesday.

“If I had stayed the President of Afghanistan, people would have been hanged and this would have been a dreadful disaster in our history. I am not fearful of an honorable death, and dishonoring Afghanistan was not acceptable to me, but I had to. I was taken out of Afghanistan to avoid bloodshed and the destruction of Afghanistan,” he added, CNN reported.

After leaving Afghanistan, Ghani is now in the UAE, Abu Dhabi confirmed on Wednesday.

“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,” the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation said in a statement.

On Sunday, as the Taliban entered Kabul, Ashraf Ghani left the country. However, Russian Embassy in Kabul had said that Ghani left Kabul with four cars and a helicopter stuffed with cash.

“As for the collapse of the regime, it is most eloquently characterised by the way Ghani fled from Afghanistan: four cars were full of money, they tried to put part of the money into a helicopter, but everything did not fit. And some of the money was left on the runway”, Sputnik quoted Russian diplomatic mission spokesperson Nikita Ishenko as saying on Monday. (ANI)