23 Facts About Ashraf Ghani

Mohammad Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai was born on 19 May 1949 and is an Afghan exiled politician, academic, and economist who served as the fifth president of Afghanistan and the second and final president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan from September 2014 until August 2021, when his government was overthrown by the Taliban.

In 2005 he became a member of the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, an independent initiative hosted by the United Nations Development Programme; that same year, Ashraf Ghani gave a TED talk in which he discussed how to rebuild a broken state such as Afghanistan.

In 2005, Ashraf Ghani gave keynote speeches for meetings including the American Bar Association's International Rule of Law Symposium, the Trans-Atlantic Policy Network, the annual meeting of the Norwegian Government's development staff, CSIS's meeting on UN reform, the UN–OECD–World Bank's meeting on Fragile States and TED Global.

On 7 May 2009, Ashraf Ghani registered as a candidate in the 2009 Afghan presidential election.

Unlike other major candidates, Ashraf Ghani asked the Afghan diaspora to support his campaign and provide financial support.

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On 28 January 2010, Ashraf Ghani attended the International Conference on Afghanistan in London, pledging his support to help rebuild their country.

In September 2019, an explosion near an election rally attended by President Ashraf Ghani killed 24 people and injured 31 others, but Ghani was unhurt.

At age 65, Ashraf Ghani became the oldest inaugurated Afghan ruler since the foundation of the Durrani Empire in 1747.

In January 2018 at the inauguration of the Khan Steel iron smelting plant in Kabul, Ashraf Ghani said that he is aiming for Afghanistan to become a steel exporter.

Tolo News while quoting an unnamed source alleged that Ashraf Ghani had refused to take a call from the Pakistani prime minister, instead he sent a NDS delegation to hand over evidence that the terrorists were supported by Pakistan.

At a July 2021 conference in Tashkent, Ashraf Ghani accused Pakistan of fomenting violence in Afghanistan through the Taliban; Pakistan accused Afghanistan of helping insurgent groups inside Pakistan.

In March 2021, in an attempt to advance the peace talks, Ashraf Ghani expressed his intentions of convincing the Taliban to hold fresh elections and allow forming of a new government through a democratic process.

On 2 August 2021, Ashraf Ghani blamed the sudden withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan to the advance of the Taliban and said the latter had not cut ties with terrorist organizations and had escalated attacks against women, which the Taliban denied.

On 11 August 2021, Ashraf Ghani appealed to local warlords and private militias to fight the Taliban and appealed to a popular uprising against the Taliban.

That day, Ashraf Ghani left Afghanistan with his wife and two close aides to Uzbekistan as the Taliban captured Kabul.

Afghan officials stated that Ashraf Ghani had left the presidential palace Sunday morning to go to the US embassy.

Later that day, Ashraf Ghani wrote on his Facebook that he thought it was better for him to leave in order to avoid bloodshed and called on the Taliban to protect civilians and said the Taliban now faced a "historic test".

The Russian embassy in Kabul alleged that Ashraf Ghani fled with "four cars and a helicopter" full of cash and had to leave some money behind as it would not all fit in.

On 8 September 2021, Ashraf Ghani released a video where he apologized to the Afghan people and repeated that he left to avoid "bloody street fighting".

The SIGAR report reported that Ashraf Ghani feared that the US was "plotting a coup" against him.

However, Ashraf Ghani renounced his US citizenship in 2009 so he could run in Afghan elections.

However, Ashraf Ghani bought this 200 acres of land separately in Logar province.

On 2 February 2020, Ashraf Ghani made controversial remarks while talking about Timur and Muhammad of Ghor which angered the Uzbek population of Afghanistan.