Privation, Malnutrition, Stalking a Taliban-Led Afghanistan

"I owe the Afghan people an explanation for leaving Kabul abruptly on August 15 after Taliban unexpectedly entered the city."

"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."

"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."

"I must now address baseless allegations that as I left Kabul I took with me millions of dollars belonging to the Afghan people. These charges are completely and categorically false. Corruption is a plague that has crippled our country for decades and fighting corruption has been a central focus in my efforts as president."

"I welcome an official audit or financial investigation under UN auspices or any other appropriate independent body to prove the veracity of my statements here."

"I offer my profound appreciate and respect for the sacrifice of all Afghans, especially our Afghan soldiers and their families, through the last forty years.".

"It is with deep and profound regret that my own chapter ended in similar tragedy to my predecessors — without ensuring stability and prosperity. I apologize to the Afghan people that I could not make it end differently. My commitment to the Afghan people has never wavered and will guide me for the rest of my life."

Former Afghan President, Ashraf Ghani, September 8, 2021

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

 

In the immediate aftermath of the lightning-swift Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in the dying days of August of 2021, accusations were that the Western-backed President of Afghanistan, taken by surprise by the swiftness of the Taliban advance, and the melting resistance of his Republic of Afghanistan military, fled the presidential palace, taking with him millions representing the treasury of the country. These were accusations that obviously stung the president, under extreme duress, seeking haven and ultimately finding it in the United Arab Emirates.

Qatar, after all, where negotiations purportedly between the Taliban negotiators and the United States. with eventual inclusion of negotiators of the Afghan government taking place in Doha, where a delegation representing the Taliban and their interests found a sympathetic home and permanent base in Qatar. Ashraf Ghani's message to the people of Afghanistan might have been better received had it been written in Pashto, the majority language of the country, and not completely in English. A legitimate question might be: who was he really addressing? 

 

"The spiralling economic crisis, the conflict and drought has meant the average family can now barely cope. We have a huge amount to do to stop this crisis from becoming a catastrophe."

"We cannot waste any moment. Our country director describes the situation as quite dire. She says it's 'an avalanche of hunger and destitution',"

Tomson Phiri, World Food Program

 

An Afghan woman buys food left behind by the US military from a peddler in Kabul, Afghanistan November 17, 2021. REUTERS/Ali Khara

"I want to categorically state I did not take any money out of the country. The helicopters in our first destination [Tashkent, Uzbekistan], were available for everyone to search. I would be delighted to have any kind of investigation, including taking a lie detector test or anything else that is important."

"[My] style of life is known to everyone [with no need to take state money]."

"On the morning of that day, I had no inkling that by late afternoon I would be leaving. [My] national security adviser and the chief of the president protective service came and said the PPS has collapsed."

"If I take a stand, they will all be killed and they will not be capable of defending me. [I left] in order to avoid further bloodshed."

"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 six million citizens."

Ashraf Ghani, in UAE exile, December 28, 2021

That old adage that a captain is supposed to go down with his sinking ship, rarely qualifies as an expectation for a deposed ruler. When an adversarial group like the Islamist fundamentalist Taliban not known for polite drawing room discourse storms into a capital city with the intention of taking it by force it can be guaranteed that in the resulting melee, the government official at the apex of the administration will somehow end up dead by 'misadventure'. The courage to remain and face the violent overthrow of his government would have gained nothing.

When advised by the head of the presidential guard and the national military that neither group was in a position to protect the president, the country's parliament and its people, defiance of the inevitable made little sense. Of course, had he remained to face his fate  he would have become a martyr, one that all Afghans now under the fist of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan's new Taliban rulers, would have venerated as an icon of heroic defiance, rather than derisively regarding him as a coward.

The international community disgraced itself, from the United States to other NATO countries that had signed on to the original purpose of destroying al-Qaeda in revenge for the 9/11 atrocities, and to free the war-torn country from the viciously restrictive confines of Taliban rule. The disjointed, pathetically unorganized and hugely inadequate international response to the Taliban's capture of the country resulting in the departure of aid groups, government missions and agencies, terrified, compromised Afghans ended in chaos. -- And the withdrawal of foreign investment and charitable donations.

It is precisely that, alongside the culture of endemic corruption that left Afghanistan a penurious, broken remnant of a nation. When the ex-leader of the country fled Kabul, Russian state media led the allegations he had left with millions in cash, that some of the millions had of necessity to be left behind since all that wealth would not be accommodated by the helicopter's interior. As absurdly malicious an interpretation as any. 

 

An Afghan boy sits on the hill overlooking the IDP camp near Qala-e-Naw, Afghanistan, Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2021. Severe drought has dramatically worsened the already desperate situation in Afghanistan forcing thousands of people to flee their homes and live in extreme poverty. Experts predict climate change is making such events even more severe and frequent. (AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov)

 

The stinging rebuke to his loyalty to Afghanistan and its people has festered and led Mr. Ghani to submit to another interview where he repeated his original of-the-moment explanations in an effort to clear his name and justify his actions. Nothing. however, will dispel the optics of the time; his decision to seek self-exile in favour of remaining to face the Taliban and whatever would emerge from that event, given how much he was despised as a tool of the West, selling out Afghanistan to expectations that would betray the Islamic ideal that the Taliban represented.

But nothing will expunge the reality that the country he abandoned to its fate is now mired in extreme food and energy shortages, where hunger stalks the land and the vulnerable will die in droves during the winter months of exposure and food deprivation. The international community, faced with the prospect of releasing funds to aid the people of Afghanistan, must do it by funding the Taliban, a terrorist group addicted to violence and vengeance.

Members of the Afghan government delegation, including Abdullah Abdullah, the chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation, during the opening of intra-Afghan negotiations in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 12, 2020. (Ron Przysucha /U.S. State Department)