Taliban rebels broke into the Afghan capital on Sunday after the government fell, and President Ashraf Ghani joined fellow citizens and foreigners to leave the country. Kabul International Airport, which is closed to all commercial flights, is reportedly the only exit point for people leaving Afghanistan.
More than 60 countries, including the US, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany and Canada, urged ‘all sides’ to protect the departure of foreign nationals and Afghans who wish to leave the war-torn country, and said that roads, airports and border The cross should remain open.
Afghanistan’s president has said he left Kabul to avoid bloodshed and a ‘major human disaster’ in the city of six million people, urging the Taliban to reveal their intentions and reassure those uncertain about their future Did.
In his first remarks since leaving Afghanistan on Sunday, Ghani said he faced a “difficult choice” between an “armed Taliban” who wanted to enter Rashtrapati Bhavan or “leaving the beloved country that I have lived my life in the past”. 20 was dedicated to the defense. years’.
Ghani said Taliban insurgents now face a new historical test of whether to protect Afghanistan’s name and honor or to prioritize other places and networks.
He said that in order to legitimize and win the hearts of those who are afraid and uncertain about their future, it is necessary for the Taliban to reassure all the people, nations, different regions, sisters and women of Afghanistan.
An academic and economist, Ghani is the 14th President of Afghanistan. He was first elected on September 20, 2014 and was re-elected in the presidential election of September 28, 2019.
The Taliban on Sunday seized the last major city outside Kabul occupied by the country’s central government, cutting off the Afghan capital to the east.
The fall of Jalalabad left Afghanistan’s central government in control of Kabul and six of the country’s 34 other provincial capitals.
After the collapse of the remaining two cities, Mazar-e-Sharif and Jalalabad, overnight, Taliban insurgents began marching towards Kabul.
US President Joe Biden announced in April that all US troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan by September 11 this year, thus ending the country’s longest war spanning two decades.
The Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, but following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, the terrorist group’s brutal rule ended as they were ousted from power by US-led forces in 2001.
However, the group has been on the offensive in recent months and is now on the verge of seizing power again. He held direct talks with the US in 2018 and in February 2020. The two sides reached a peace deal in Doha, which committed the US to withdraw and the Taliban to stop attacks on US forces.
But in the year that followed, the Taliban continued to target Afghan security forces and civilians and moved rapidly across the country.