The fact that the former president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, abandoned his people is hard to digest. But what if we tell you that in reality, Ghani, whose dishonest tendencies and empty promises drove the war-torn nation into a spiralling crisis, was bribed to not resist the Taliban?
The Italian TG1 News Network disclosed in an investigative report that Qatar had paid Ashraf Ghani, Marshal Dostum and Atta Mohammad Noor around $110, $51 and $61 million to not fight against the Taliban.
The documents emphasise that Ajmal Ahmadi received $110 million on behalf of the former president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani. While the former deputy of the Supreme National Reconciliation Council received $51 million on behalf of former vice president Marshal Dostum from the Qatar representative in Kabul.
Similarly, Mohammad Farhad Azimi, who was the representative of Atta Mohammad Noor, the former governor of Balkh, received $61 million.
The archive of Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted that Dr Mutlaq Al-Qahtani, Qatar’s envoy to Afghanistan, had met Ashraf Ghani at the Presidential Palace on 7th July 2021.
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The documents show that Ghani, Dostum and Noor received money from the Qatar government and were told not to resist the Taliban. Five weeks after the payment of the amount at the Embassy of Qatar in Kabul, Taliban entered the capital without any resistance.
Filippo Rossi, the prominent Italian journalist who created this investigative report, stressed that it had been prepared after examining documents and speaking to credible sources.
Rossi is speaking the truth
Now speaking of the Taliban, in the immediate aftermath of its takeover, former president Ghani fled the nation, leaving behind countless vulnerable people who had pinned their hopes on him.
Ghani’s departure was severely condemned. An unidentified Afghan politician highlighted Ghani’s previous statement in which he promised to prevent political instability in the country and end the suffering of Afghans. But within a few hours of that statement, two of the biggest cities, Jalalabad and Mazar-i-Sharif, were captured by Taliban.
There were also several reports which claimed that as Ghani was fleeing Afghanistan, he took a huge chunk of cash with him. While Kawoon Khamoosh, a BBC journalist, reported that Ghani took with him around $169 million, Reuters noted that he fled Afghanistan with four cars and a helicopter full of cash.
Similarly, according to TOLO News, the Afghan embassy in Tajikistan asked Interpol to detain Ghani on charges of stealing public funds.
Apart from these grave details, another strange aspect of the Afghan crisis which corroborates Rossi’s claims is that despite 300,000 soldiers in the Afghan military, the nation still fell into the hands of the Taliban, which had only 80,000 fighters.
There is certainly some deal which happened behind closed doors which made these 300,000 soldiers surrender their country into the hands of Taliban.
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Speaking of terrorists, it must be noted that Qatar is infamous for supporting extremism. In fact, the country finances Hamas, Al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood. In 2017, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the UAE severed all ties with the Middle Eastern country and imposed an embargo on it, due to its support for terrorism.
Therefore, these developments and unforeseeable occurrences prove that Qatar had a hand in the Taliban’s revival and subsequent takeover of Afghanistan. Otherwise, why would a nation fall into the hands of a group of bloodthirsty maniacs without any major resistance? What made Ashraf Ghani, who had earlier promised that he is not going to let Afghanistan fall into the hands of Taliban, suddenly flee the country? Qatar definitely had a role in the resurgence of Taliban 2.0.
