Afghanistan: A tale of two Ghanis—one triumphant, the other ‘traitor’

Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: The Afghans, who vanquished and packed off three superpowers of the day from their inhospitable mountains since the 19^th century, often told their occupiers: ‘You may have the watch but we have the time.”

No one is better living proof of this adage than Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar Akhund, the 54-year-old co-founder of the Taliban, who returned from Doha (Qatar) to Kabul triumphantly after 20 years on Wednesday, completing his Islamist militia’s lightning recapture of Afghanistan in less than a month.

In contrast, Afghanistan’s Vice President Amrullah Saleh feebly claimed that he is now the ‘caretaker’ President after the incumbent Mohammad Ashraf Ghani Ahmedzai fled the country on Sunday, carrying with him, as the Russian claimed, four big suitcases full of cash, estimated at $ 50 million.

The two Ghanis are as different from each other as chalk with cheese.

For eight years from 2010, Mullah Ghani languished in a Pakistani jail on charges of masterminding the Taliban regime’s ruthless terror campaign against the West and its supporters in Afghanistan when they ruled it from 1994 to 2001. Then the US got him released, took him on board as the chief negotiator of the ‘good’ Taliban, held several rounds of talks in Doha (Qatar), led by US diplomat, Afghan-American Zalmay Khalilzad.

The two sides struck a ‘deal’ during then US President Donald Trump’s administration, which was set in motion by his successor Joe Biden early in 2021.

In May 2021, the US began to withdraw its defense infrastructure from Afghanistan, leading to the Taliban returning to power on August 15, 2021. Now Mullah Ghani is tipped to take over as the next President.

He does not speak English, nor courts the media. His official statements are often laced with Quranic quotes. But he is seen as ‘pragmatic’. In a video message on Sunday, he praised the “unexpectedly swift” Taliban takeover, promising to “serve the Afghan people and set an example for the rest of the world”.

Born in Afghanistan’s central Uruzgan province, Mullah Ghani fought with the Mujahideen against the Soviet army. Then he joined his childhood friend and ‘spiritual leader’, the one-eyed Mullah Umar, also his brother-in-law, to establish the Taliban in 1994. Umar named him ‘Baradar’ (Brother).

When the American-led West invaded Afghanistan in 2001, Mullah Ghani was the Taliban regime’s, Deputy Defence Minister. After the militia’s rule collapsed, his faction sought conciliation with Hamid Karzai, the US-backed President, who hailed from the same Popalzai tribe of the Pashtuns.

But other violent Taliban factions apparently forced his hands. By 2008, he spearheaded the Taliban attacks, devising a strategy called “Ibrat” (warning), envisaging targeted killings, kidnappings, and the use of suicide bombers, against Afghans serving in the Karzai government.

In 2010, the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI “accidentally” found him and arrested him during a raid on a Karachi house. He was released in 2018 at the request of Khalilzad, an ethnic Pashtun from the Noorzai tribe, sent as the US envoy by the Trump Administration. The Khalilzad-Ghani duo is believed to have agreed upon a ‘power-sharing arrangement’ in Afghanistan. Mullah Ghani has since been the Taliban’s political chief, liaising on behalf of the militia with others, including the US-backed government in Kabul.

In February 2020, Mullah Ghani signed a ‘peace deal’ with the US, which the Trump administration hailed as a ‘diplomatic triumph’.

He had also met Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who seemed confident that America could now treat its old foe as a ‘working partner’ of sorts. According to media reports, Pompeo declared: “We welcome the Taliban’s commitments not to host international terror groups including Al-Qaeda.”

The tale of the other Ghani is different.

Mohammad Ashraf Ghani Ashrafzai, the 71-year-old former Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University in the US, had worked with the UN and the World Bank as well. He served as Afghanistan’s Finance Minister and Chancellor of Kabul University before being sworn in as the 14^th President, where he worked from September 29, 2014, to August 15, 2021. At one time, he was even tipped to be the UN’s Secretary-General.

The man who co-wrote “Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World,” has now become Afghanistan’s chief villain. Despite being a Pashtun, Afghanistan’s dominant ethnic group, Ghani was seen as an outsider lacking political insights as he became more and more isolated. He had returned to Afghanistan for the first time after over 25 years, in the wake of the U.S. invasion of 2001

In 2017, Ghani told the BBC that he had “the worst job on earth” and claimed that Afghan National Army (ANA) would expel the Taliban, which still dominated the rural areas, by 2021.

When the Trump Administration started direct talks with the Taliban in a bid to end America’s longest war, it shut Ghani out of the process. And when President Joe Biden set a withdrawal deadline for August 31, Ghani resisted calls to step aside and allow a transitional government to take power as the  Taliban made military advances.

Early in August, when the Taliban zeroed in on Kabul, Ghani told the people that he would avoid the fate of former king Amanullah Khan, who abdicated and fled to British India in 1929.

“I will not flee!” he declared on August 4, “I won’t seek safe haven and I will be at the service of people.”

Hours before he fled, he claimed he was mobilizing the ANA forces to defend Kabul, and called for the Defense Ministry to set up telephone lines to help citizens.

After fleeing to an undisclosed destination, Ghani released a Facebook post saying he exited the country to avoid bloodshed, a move that infuriated his cabinet colleagues.

“Ashraf Ghani has betrayed his own motherland, team, and tribe,” Abdul Haq Hamad, a member of Taliban’s media team, told Afghanistan’s Tolo News. “Such treason will always be remembered.”