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Weeks after fleeing Afghanistan, former President Ashraf Ghani issues ‘explanation’ statement to Afghan people — only in English

  • "I owe the Afghan people an explanation for leaving Kabul abruptly on August 15 after Taliban unexpectedly entered the city," Ghani began, in a letter posted to his Twitter account that was written only in English.
  • The former Afghan president denied taking millions of dollars in cash with him as he fled Afghanistan.

Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani attends a security meeting in Kabul, Afghanistan August 14, 2021.Afghan Presidential Palace | Reuters

More than three weeks after fleeing Kabul by helicopter as the Taliban swept through the capital, former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani issued a statement late Wednesday in apology to his fellow countrymen.

"I owe the Afghan people an explanation for leaving Kabul abruptly on August 15 after Taliban unexpectedly entered the city," Ghani began, in a letter posted to his Twitter account that was written only in English.

Three days after his speedy departure and amid apocalyptic scenes of panic at Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport as desperate Afghans tried to flee the country, Ghani resurfaced in the United Arab Emirates, whose government confirmed it had welcomed him and his family on humanitarian grounds.

"I left at the urging of the palace security who advised me that to remain risked setting off the same horrific street to street fighting the city had suffered during the Civil War of the 1990s. Leaving Kabul was the most difficult decision of my life, but I believed it was the only way to keep the guns silent and save Kabul and her 6 million citizens," the former academic and World Bank official, who had been Afghanistan's president since 2014, wrote.

In what some are seeing as an attempt to avoid accountability, Ghani said, "Now is not the moment for a long assessment of the events leading to my departure," adding that "I will address them in the near future."

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