Ghani pledged to fight till death but fled: Blinken

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CBS on Sunday that former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani promised to fight till death but instead fled Kabul when the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) arrived at the gates of the city.

This comes a week after former US special envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad said on the same show that the Biden administration could have done more to prevent the collapse of the government in Kabul.

On Sunday’s show, the interviewer asked Blinken if he had personally tried to persuade Ghani to stay in Kabul.

Blinken said he had been on the phone with Ghani on the Saturday night, “pressing him to make sure he was ready to agree with the plan we were trying to put into effect — to do a transfer of power to- to a new government that would have been led by the Taliban (IEA), but then inclusive and included all aspects of Afghan society.

“And he told me on the phone he was prepared to do that, but if the Taliban (IEA) wouldn’t go along, he was ready to fight to the death,” said Blinken.

However, the next day, August 15, Ghani fled Afghanistan.

Blinken stated that neither the US intelligence agencies nor any politicians expected “the rapid implosion of the government and the security forces. No one anticipated that would happen over the course of 11 days.”

Asked if he did everything he could, Blinken said the State Department was reviewing everything that the US had done, starting from 2020 when the Trump administration made an agreement with the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan, as well as all actions taken over the years.