Former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani has accepted “shared” responsibility for the fall of the country into Taliban hands, blaming himself for trusting the US which negotiated a deal with the militant group that brought about his ouster.
Faraan: “One has to take responsibility for trusting a partner that then trampled our sovereignty and imposed the release of 5,000 [Taliban] prisoners, among them, the largest drug dealers in history in the region,” Ghani said in an interview with state-financed US broadcaster, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
“Responsibility is shared, and where I take responsibility for is to have trusted our key partner that signed our withdrawal agreement — and for one full year — its (US) forces were not attacked by the Taliban, but our forces paid the highest price,” he further emphasized, referring to Washington’s deal with the militant group not to attack US and allied occupation forces across Afghanistan while leaving them free to wage terror attacks against Afghan government forces and civilians.
The deal – known as the Doha agreement signed between the administration of former US president Donald Trump and the Taliban – did not involve the official Afghan government, provided a date for total withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan and forced the Washington-sponsored Ghani administration to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners.
Ghani further slammed the US-Taliban deal, insisting that Washington’s “assumptions regarding the Taliban were highly flawed” and “based on wishful thinking.” He also promised that the preparation and implementation of the pact “will go down in the history as one of the worst agreements ever concluded.”
“The US propped up the Taliban… The Trump administration — without the Trump administration’s role, the Taliban would not be here today,” the ex-president of Afghanistan then underlined. US presidents and other American officials are “never held accountable for crimes of war and against humanity,” according to an American political analyst. Ghani went on to blast Washington for establishing what he described as “false assurance systems,” saying, “We were assured that a cease-fire would take place and political negotiations regarding the future government will be an indispensable part of the agreement, which they were not.”
