A prominent activist blasted President Biden and ousted Afghan leader Ashraf Ghani, blaming them for the rise of the Taliban and the fall of Kabul.
Fatima Gailani, the former president of the Afghan Red Crescent Society and the daughter of a former Afghan politician, was among four women who had been involved in peace talks with the Taliban over the last year.
“I’m still totally shocked because we were so close,” Gailani told German wire service Deutsche Welle in an interview Friday. “We were really so close to having an orderly transfer of power, and then Mr. Ghani ruined everything to rescue his money.”
Gailani has a master’s degree in Islamic studies and jurisprudence from The Muslim College in London. Her father, Ahmed Gailani, was one of the Afghan mujahideen leaders who fought against the Soviet occupation of the 1980s. He died in 2017.
“He betrayed his country,” Gailani said of Ghani. “He betrayed people very close to him. He could have waited. He could have left the country in an orderly way — and transfer of power would have happened. What he did was a total disgrace.”
Gailani also blasted Biden for pulling US troops out of the country.
“Mr. President, what you did to Afghanistan was very very reckless,” she said. “As much as we blame Ashraf Ghani, and I openly call him a national traitor, I would also tell Biden that this is not the way that a superpower should behave like.”