The final admission of defeat: Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani left the capital Kabul on Sunday under pressure from the advance of the radical Islamist Taliban. This was announced by his former deputy, the chairman of the Afghan Peace Council, Abdullah Abdullah. A senior Interior Ministry official said Ghani was headed to neighboring Tajikistan.
In the evening, the president who had fled went public via Facebook. The politician explains that he left the country to avoid bloodshed. He does not comment on his whereabouts.
After their surprisingly quick campaign of conquest, the Taliban reached the capital on Sunday and are about to return to power after 20 years.
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Just over three months after the international troop withdrawal began, the extremists moved into the city, according to the Interior Ministry. They come “from all sides,” said a senior ministerial representative.
The Taliban declared that talks were underway with the government about a “peaceful transfer of power”. According to a spokesman, they have nevertheless instructed their fighters to invade Kabul to prevent looting. A little later, they announced that they had broken into the capital’s presidential palace.
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“No attack on Kabul”
A minister announced the transfer of power to a transitional government without giving any details about this government. “There will be no attack on the city (Kabul),” said the acting interior minister, Abdul Sattar Mirsakawal, according to Tolo News. “It was agreed that there would be a peaceful handover.”
In diplomatic circles it was said that the former Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali, now living in the USA and once Afghanistan’s ambassador to Germany, was being discussed as a compromise candidate for the management of a transitional government.
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The Taliban, which had conquered one provincial town after the other in the past week, moved into the penultimate city of Jalalabad on Sunday – without a fight, as one official said. They say they want to take control of Kabul within the “next few days”. The militia is aiming for a “peaceful transfer” of power in the capital, said Qatar-based Taliban representative Suhail Shahin to the BBC. The Taliban wanted to form an “inclusive Islamic government” in which “all Afghans” were represented.
An Austrian in Afghanistan
Shahin assured that the Taliban fighters would not attack foreign ambassadors or citizens. He appealed to foreigners not to leave the country. In the days before, however, the USA and other Western states had begun preparations for embassy staff and other citizens of their country to leave Afghanistan.
Austria does not have any embassy staff in Kabul; the Afghanistan area is looked after from Islamabad (Pakistan). The Foreign Ministry in Vienna currently only knows of one person with Austrian citizenship who is still in Afghanistan that an exit is already planned.
