The departure of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani from the country has left many in the country feeling angered and confused as the Taliban armed group looked to retake power 20 years after it was toppled in a United States-led military invasion, reports Aljazeera.
Late on Sunday, it was announced that Ghani had left the country with several members of his cabinet.
“The former President of Afghanistan has left Afghanistan … He has left the nation in this state [for that] God will hold him to account,” Abdullah, chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation, said in a video posted to his Facebook page.
The collapse of the Western-backed government in Kabul comes in the wake of Taliban blitzkrieg that began on August 6 and led to the capture of more than two dozen Afghan provinces by Sunday morning.
Some of the last provinces to fall were in the country’s east, with the city of Jalalabad being the last of the country’s major cities to be captured by the Taliban after a deal was struck between local elders, the governor and members of the armed group.
A ‘disgrace’
A politician from an eastern province, who wished to remain anonymous, described Ghani’s departure as a “disgrace”.
The politician accused Ghani of “lying to the people this whole time” and of “keeping the Afghan people in the dark”.
The politician pointed to Ghani’s pre-taped statement on Saturday as an example of lying to the Afghan people. In that address, Ghani, who appeared to be reading from a teleprompter, promised to “concentrate on preventing expansion of instability, violence and displacement of my people”, however, within a few hours of that address two of Afghanistan’s biggest cities - Jalalabad and Mazar-i-Sharif - fell to the Taliban.
References to Ghani lying or keeping secrets had become even more commonplace over the last two months, when first districts, and later provinces, began falling to the Taliban.
Early on Sunday, hours before Ghani’s departure, Atta Mohammad Noor, the powerful former commander of the northern province of Balkh, accused the government of a “big organised and cowardly plot”.