ABU DHABI: Former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani said Wednesday he supports talks between the Taliban and top former officials, and denied allegations that he transferred large sums of money out of the country before fleeing to the United Arab Emirates.
Ghani — making his first appearance since leaving Kabul on Sunday as the Taliban encircled the capital, a departure that ultimately resulted in their full takeover — reiterated that he had left in order to spare the country more bloodshed.
He said in the recorded video message, broadcast on his Facebook page, that he had no intention of remaining in exile in the Gulf nation and was “in talks” to return home.
He also said he was making efforts to “safeguard the rule of Afghans over our country,” without offering details.
“For now, I am in the Emirates so that bloodshed and chaos is stopped,” Ghani said from the UAE, which confirmed Wednesday he was being hosted there on “humanitarian grounds.”
He voiced support for talks held Wednesday between senior members of the Taliban movement, Ghani’s predecessor Hamid Karzai, and Abdullah Abdullah, who headed the ultimately failed peace process.
“I want the success of this process,” he said.
It was Abdullah — a long-time rival of Ghani — who announced the president had left the country on Sunday, suggesting he would be judged harshly.
But Ghani insisted he had left for the good of the country, and not his own wellbeing.
“Do not believe whoever tells you that your president sold you out and fled for his own advantage and to save his own life,” he said. “These accusations are baseless... and I strongly reject them.”
“I was expelled from Afghanistan in such a way that I didn’t even get the chance to take my slippers off my feet and pull on my boots,” he added, noting that he had arrived in the Emirates “empty-handed.”
He claimed that the Taliban had entered Kabul despite an agreement not to do so.
“Had I stayed there, an elected president of Afghanistan would have been hanged again right before the Afghans’ own eyes,” he said.
The first time the Taliban seized Kabul, when they established their regime in 1996, they dragged former communist president Mohammed Najibullah from a United Nations office where he had been sheltering, and hanged him in a public street after torturing him.
Former Afghan leader Ashraf Ghani: I left Kabul to prevent bloodshed, did not take money
https://arab.news/4ms89
Former Afghan leader Ashraf Ghani: I left Kabul to prevent bloodshed, did not take money
- Ghani made his first appearance since leaving Kabul as the Taliban encircled the capital, a departure that ultimately resulted in their full takeover
- He reiterated that he had left in order to spare the country more bloodshed
Uganda partially restores internet after president wins 7th term
- “The internet shutdown implemented two days before the elections limited access to information, freedom of association, curtailed economic activities ... it also created suspicion and mistrust on the electoral process,” the team said in their report
KAMPALA: Ugandan authorities have partially restored internet services late after 81-year-old President Yoweri Museveni won a seventh term to extend his rule into a fifth decade with a landslide victory rejected by
the opposition.
Users reported being able to reconnect to the internet and some internet service providers sent out a message to customers saying the regulator had ordered them to restore services excluding social media.
“We have restored internet so that businesses that rely on internet can resume work,” David Birungi, spokesperson for Airtel Uganda, one of the country’s biggest telecom companies said. He added that the state communications regulator had ordered that social media remain shut down.
The state-run Uganda Communications Commission said it had cut off internet to curb “misinformation, disinformation, electoral fraud and related risks.” The opposition, however, criticized the move saying it was to cement control over the electoral process and guarantee a win for the incumbent.
The electoral body in the East African country on Saturday declared Museveni the winner of Thursday’s poll with 71.6 percent of the vote, while his rival pop star-turned-politician Bobi Wine was credited with 24 percent
of the vote.
A joint report from an election observer team from the African Union and other regional blocs criticized the involvement of the military in the election and the authorities’ decision to cut
off internet.
“The internet shutdown implemented two days before the elections limited access to information, freedom of association, curtailed economic activities ... it also created suspicion and mistrust on the electoral process,” the team said in their report.
In power since 1986 and currently Africa’s third longest-ruling head of state, Museveni’s latest win means he will have been in power for nearly half a century when his new term ends in 2031.
He is widely thought to be preparing his son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, to take over from him. Kainerugaba is currently head of the military and has expressed presidential ambitions.
Wine, who was taking on Museveni for a second time, has rejected the results of the latest vote and alleged mass fraud during the election.
Scattered opposition protests broke out late on Saturday after results were announced, according to a witness and police.
In Magere, a suburb in Kampala’s north where Wine lives, a group of youths burned tires and erected barricades in the road prompting police to respond with tear gas.
Police spokesperson Racheal Kawala said the protests had been quashed and that arrests were made but said the number of those detained would be released later.
Wine’s whereabouts were unknown early on Sunday after he said in a post on X he had escaped a raid by the military on his home. People close to him said he remained at an undisclosed location in Uganda. Wine was briefly held under house arrest following the previous election in 2021.
Wine has said hundreds of his supporters were detained during the months leading up to the vote and that others have been tortured.
Government officials have denied those allegations and say those who have been detained have violated the law and will be put through due process.
