four cars and even a helicopter full of money

The real fate of escaped Afghan president Ashraf Ghani it’s a mystery. His worthy exit plan evaporated in the chaos of the fall of Kabul and it was not as dignified as it was imagined.

The Taliban entered the presidential palace empty. They went that way. They marveled at the luxury, the carpets, the art, and settled into the presidential office, with their turbans, their recently looted American M16 rifles and their Shawar Kamiz, the traditional Afghan uniform.

There, they posed as the Al Jazeera network broadcast the scene live.

Ghani apparently fled in Tajikistan, a former Soviet republic that has always maintained a consulate in Kabul. But the Tajiks they wouldn’t have let it land him, his two security advisers and his guards, and is said to have continued as far as Oman, in the Arabian Sea, an emirate characterized by mediator in conflicts of the region.

Nobody knows exactly where will your trip end after having done all his academic training in the United States.

“The best is to go there”

Since his exile, hidden, sent a Facebook message to his country saying “To avoid a bloodbath I think the best thing is to leave”.

A few hours later, the taliban put on his chair of this technocrat, who returned to Kabul in 2002 from the World Bank and who taught at Stanford University to be the country’s finance minister.

A report from the Russian government, which is not a friend of President Ghani, said that upon leaving the presidential palace in the hyper-protected green zone of Kabul , was followed by a convoy of cars Yes a helicopter loaded with money.

Speaking to the RIA news agency, a Russian embassy spokesperson reported that “the collapse of the regime had its most telling feature in the way Ghani fled Afghanistan”.

“Four cars were loaded with money. They tried to put the money in a helicopter but all was not right, then they left him on the trail, ”he said. His account cannot be corroborated.

Ghani’s departure took his office by surprise, his allies, former President Karzai, his neighbor at the Palace of the Security Zone, and Abdullah Abdullah, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, in charge of a reconciliation commission with the Taliban. They met with Taliban leaders on Wednesday for a transition to government.

afghan society condemned their abandonment. Even Central Bank President Ajmal Azhmady, who managed to escape Kabul on Tuesday in a military plane, said the felt “disgusted” for the abandonment of the president of the country.

“It didn’t have to end that way. I am disgusted by the lack of planning of the Afghan leadership. See them at the airport and then leave without warning the others! ”Ahmady commented on Twitter.

“Once the president’s departure was announced, I knew that a few minutes later chaos would follow. I can’t forgive him for creating this without a transition plan, ”he said.

A few days earlier, Ghani had made fun of King Amanullah Khan, the Afghan monarch who abdicated and fled to British India in 1929, when he had to face an Islamic rebellion. “I am not one of those who run away,” Ghani said.

Khan never returned and ended his days in Rome, in a large village, with the few possessions he was able to collect in his flight.

Ghani came to power through elections to fraud allegations in 2014 and 2019. His plan was to fight corruption and stabilize the country’s economy.

With NATO’s withdrawal from combat operations in 2014, this Pashtun tribal president failed to stop the Taliban and the country plunged into violence.

Faced with the talks that Donald Trump advocated in Doha to reach a peace agreement and leave Afghanistan, Ghani resisted American pressure. The Taliban refused to declare a ceasefire and he continued the attacks as US forces hastened their departure.

Where is Ashraf Ghani now? The former Afghan president, who fled Kabul when the Taliban took control of the country, is now based in Abu Dhabi, according to a report. Kabul News reported, citing sources, that Ghani is currently in the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Paris, correspondent

ap