Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who fled Kabul days ago as the Taliban closed in on the city, has emerged in the United Arab Emirates and defended his actions, explaining that events had unfolded in a “hasty way” and he didn’t want to be “hanged” by the Taliban, CNN reports.
In a video messaged posted on Facebook Wednesday, Ghani said he had left Afghanistan to avoid bloodshed and prevent Afghanistan from becoming like Syria and Yemen, and avert “dreadful disaster” of “being hanged in public” had he remained in office.
“The decision was made that whatever happened 25 years ago would be repeated if I had stayed the President of Afghanistan. I would have been hanged in front of the eyes of the people of Afghanistan and this would have been a dreadful disaster in our history,” he said, according to the BBC.
He also rejected accusations that he left the country with a large amount of money, calling it a “baseless lie.”
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Ghani defended his move, saying that he had been working to ensure a peaceful transition of power with the Taliban.
“Those who think that I fled the country, my message is that you should not judge if you do not have all the information and details,” he said.
But Afghan Chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation, Abdullah Abdullah, said on Sunday that God would hold Ghani “accountable and the people of Afghanistan will also judge him” for putting them and the country “in such a bad situation.”
