Afghanistan’s fugitive President, Ashraf Ghani, is in the United Arab Emirates, the Gulf state’s foreign ministry has announced. A spokesperson in a statement said: “The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation can confirm that the UAE has welcomed President Ashraf Ghani and his family into the country on humanitarian grounds.”
Ghani fled the capital Kabul on Sunday afternoon as Taliban fighters advanced on the city, reports the BBC. Meanwhile, the Afghan ambassador to Tajikstan has alleged that he was carrying around $169 million when he left on Sunday.
He called President Ghani’s flight a “betrayal of the homeland and the nation.” Ambassador Mohammad Zahir Aghbar was speaking at a news conference at the Afghan embassy in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe. He also announced that the embassy intended to recognise Ghani’s former deputy Amrullah Saleh as the acting president of Afghanistan. In an audio message released to BBC News last night, Saleh claimed that he was “the legitimate caretaker president of Afghanistan” and promised that “the war is not over.”