Did Qatar bribe Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to not fight the Taliban?

In a major revelation, Italy’s State-run TV network Tg1 has reported that Qatar allegedly paid the then Afghan President, Ashraf Ghani, $110 million to not fight the Taliban militants.

The State-run network also says that Qatar paid $51 million to Marshal Abdul Rashid Dostum– commander and warlord, and $61 million to Atta Mohammad Noor–former governor of Balkh province for not resisting the Taliban. The money was allegedly paid in Kabul by a Qatari representative.

To buttress its investigation, Tg1 published various documents on Thursday to prove that the money was allegedly received by the three Afghan leaders one month before Ghani’s government fell without offering resistance to the Taliban forces.

Afghanistan’s Khaama Press reports that the investigation says representatives of Ghani, Dostum and Noor received the money from a representative of Qatar after signing the documents on 7 July 2021.

One of the documents says that Ajmal Ahmady, the then Central Bank Governor, received  $110 million on behalf of former president Ghani.

Another document allegedly shows that Mohammad Farhad Azimi, the then governor of Balkh province, received $61 million on behalf of Noor from Qatar’s representative in Kabul.

The sensational news has been picked up by other Gulf media organisations as well.

The third document says that the former first deputy of the Supreme National Reconciliation Council received $51 million from the Qatar representative on behalf of Marshal Dostum. This document allegedly praised Dostum’s cooperation in retreating from the northern provinces such as Fariyab and Jawzjan provinces.

 

Khaama Press says that the archive of Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs shows that Qatari ambassador, Dr Mutlaq Al-Qahtani was in Kabul and had met with the then president Ashraf Ghani at the presidential palace on 7 July 2021.

The letters highlight that while money was given to the three Afghan leaders to avoid resisting the Taliban fighters, for Dostum and Noor the money was specifically meant to not fight against the Taliban in Northern Afghanistan.

Former president Ghani and the Qatar government have not responded to the allegations.

Dostum’s representative, Babur Farahmand rejected the allegations on his Facebook profile.

Noor too rejected the authenticity of the documents and claimed that the media fabricated these documents in support of terror groups.

Italian journalist Filippo Rossi conducted this investigation for the State-run TV network Tg1. He claimed that the Afghan national forces were directed from Kabul to retreat and not resist the Taliban.

Going back to the action-packed days of July-August 2021, the world had observed with shock and surprise how the US-trained Afghan National Defense Force had fallen like a pack of cards to the Taliban militants. Even capital Kabul fell into Taliban hands in a day with no opposition or resistance from the Afghan army.

Also Read: With fifty shades of militants—will Taliban ruled Afghanistan become the world’s first terrorist state?