TALIBAN FIGHTERS TO ENTER KABUL ‘TO PREVENT LOOTING’: SPOKESMAN

Sun 15 August 2021:

The Taliban have ordered their fighters to enter parts of Kabul to prevent looting, their spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid has said, according to Afghan TV network Tolo.

Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani has left the capital Kabul for Tajikistan, a senior Afghan Interior Ministry official said on Sunday.

Asked for comment, the president’s office said it “cannot say anything about Ashraf Ghani’s movement for security reasons”.

A representative of the Taliban, which entered the capital Kabul earlier on Sunday, said the group was checking on Ghani’s whereabouts.

Ghani is a former economist and academic, who has served as Afghanistan’s president since 2014. He was reelected in September 2019 but due to a protracted process was not sworn in until March 2020.

He used to be an American citizen but he gave up his passport to run for the Afghan presidency in 2009.

Ghani previously taught anthropology at Berkeley and Johns Hopkins University in the United States between 1983 and 1991, and later began working at the World Bank. He was at the global financial institution in Washington during the September 11 attacks, and used the tragedy as a springboard for his re-engagement in Afghan politics, returning to his home country just months after the event.

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