Taliban had been invited into Kabul, says former Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai – Nationwide

The Taliban didn’t take the Afghan capital — they had been invited, says the person who issued the invitation.

In an Related Press interview, former Afghan President Hamid Karzai provided a number of the first insights into the key and sudden departure of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani — and the way he got here to ask the Taliban into town “to guard the inhabitants in order that the nation, town doesn’t fall into chaos and the undesirable components who would most likely loot the nation, loot retailers.”

When Ghani left, his safety officers additionally left. Protection minister Bismillah Khan even requested Karzai if he wished to depart Kabul when Karzai contacted him to know what remnants of the federal government nonetheless remained. It turned on the market had been none. Not even the Kabul police chief had remained.

Karzai, who was the nation’s president for 13 years after the Taliban had been first ousted within the wake of the 9/11 assaults, refused to depart.

In a wide-ranging interview at his tree-lined compound within the heart of town the place he lives along with his spouse and younger kids, Karzai was adamant that Ghani’s flight scuttled a last-minute push by himself, the federal government’s chief negotiator Abdullah Abdullah and the Taliban management in Doha that will have seen the Taliban enter the capital as a part of a negotiated settlement.

The countdown to a doable deal started Aug. 14, the day earlier than the Taliban got here to energy.

Karzai and Abdullah met Ghani, and so they agreed that they would go away for Doha the subsequent day with a listing of 15 others to barter a power-sharing settlement. The Taliban had been already on the outskirts of Kabul, however Karzai stated the management in Qatar promised the rebel pressure would stay outdoors town till the deal was struck.

Early on the morning of Aug. 15, Karzai stated, he waited to attract up the record. The capital was fidgety, on edge. Rumors had been swirling a few Taliban takeover. Karzai known as Doha. He was advised the Taliban wouldn’t enter town.

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At midday, the Taliban known as to say that “the federal government ought to keep in its positions and mustn’t transfer that they haven’t any intention to (go) into town,” Karzai stated. “I and others spoke to numerous officers and assurances got to us that, sure, that was the case that the Individuals and the federal government forces had been holding agency to the locations (and) that Kabul would wouldn’t fall.”

By about 2:45 p.m., although, it turned obvious Ghani had fled town. Karzai known as the protection minister, known as the inside minister, looked for the Kabul police chief. Everybody was gone. “There was no official current in any respect within the capital, no police chief, no corps commander, no different models. That they had all left.”

Ghani’s personal safety unit’s deputy chief known as Karzai to come back to the palace and take over the presidency. He declined, saying legally he had no proper to the job. As a substitute the previous president determined to make a public, televised message, along with his kids at his aspect “in order that the Afghan individuals know that we’re all right here.”

Karzai was adamant that there would have been an settlement for a peaceable transition had Ghani remained in Kabul.

“Completely. Completely. That’s what we had been making ready for, what we had been hoping (alongside) with the chairman of the peace council to go to Doha that night, or the subsequent morning, and to finalize the settlement,” he stated. “And I imagine the Taliban leaders had been additionally ready for us in Doha for a similar … goal, for a similar goal.”

Immediately, Karzai meets recurrently with the Taliban management and says the world should interact with them. Equally essential, he stated, is that Afghans have to come back collectively. Conflict has dominated Afghanistan for greater than 40 years, and within the final 20 years “Afghans have suffered on all sides,” he stated. “Afghans have misplaced lives on all sides. . . . The Afghan military has suffered. Afghan police have suffered, the Taliban troopers have suffered.”

He added: “An finish to that may solely come when Afghans get collectively, discover their very own means out.”

The previous president has a plan. In his talks with the Taliban, he’s advocating the momentary resurrection of the structure that ruled when Afghanistan was a monarchy. The concept was additionally floated throughout earlier Doha talks.

On the identical time, a conventional Loya Jirga — a grand council of all Afghans, together with girls — could be convened. It might determine the nation’s future, together with a consultant authorities, a structure, a nationwide flag.

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There’s no indication the Taliban will settle for his formulation, although he says they haven’t rejected it in discussions. A jirga is a centuries-old Afghan custom for decision-making and is especially in style amongst ethnic Pashtuns, which make up the spine of the Taliban.

Karzai stated a future Afghanistan has to have common schooling rights for boys and women and girls “should discover their place within the Afghan polity, within the administration, in financial exercise and social exercise, the political exercise in all methods of life. … That’s a problem on which there can’t be any compromise.”

However till it occurs, Karzai says, the world has to have interaction with the Taliban. Afghanistan must function. Authorities servants need to be paid. Well being care amenities have to perform.

“Proper now, they should cooperate with the federal government in any type they will,” stated Karzai. who additionally bemoaned the unchallenged and generally fallacious worldwide perceptions of the Taliban. He cited claims that ladies and women aren’t allowed outdoors their properties or require a male companion. “That’s not true. There are women on the streets — girls by themselves.” The state of affairs on the bottom in Kabul bears this out.

Requested to explain the Taliban, Karzai stated: “I might describe them as Afghans, however Afghans who’ve gone by way of a really tough interval of their lives as all different Afghans have accomplished for the previous 40 years.”

We “have been by way of an especially tough interval of our historical past by which we, the Afghans, have made errors on all sides, by which the worldwide neighborhood and those that interacted with us have made super errors,” Karzai stated. “It’s time for all of us to understand that, and to look again on the errors that now we have all made and to make it higher.”