United States (US) Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that the former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani promised to fight till death but when the Taliban came, he fled, reports Dawn.
In a show, Blinken was asked if he had personally tried to persuade Ghani to stay in Kabul. To which he replied that he was on the phone with the former President on the night of August 14 (a day before the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul). Blinken said that he was pressing him to accept a plan for transferring power to a new government.
Secretary Blinken said that Ghani told him that, “he was prepared to do that, but if the Taliban wouldn’t go along, he was ready to fight till death. And the very next day, he fled Afghanistan.”
This government would have been “led by the Taliban but would have included all aspects of the Afghan society,” he added while answering the question.
Blinken claimed that he had engaged with the former President Ghani over many weeks and months.
