Ashraf Ghani desires to shun direct engagement with politics, says brother

Hashmat Ghani Ahmadzai, brother of Afghanistan’s former president Ashraf Ghani, has said his brother desires to refrain from engaging in politics directly again and wishes to render his services for cementing stability in Afghanistan and the region at large.

Speaking to The Express Tribune, Hashmat said his brother has intimated his desire to distance himself from the country's conventional politics in order to reorient his energies towards endeavours for bringing stability to the country.

"He wishes to do things that can bring stability, economic growth and maintain peace," the younger Ghani said underlining his brother's new stance. “He has no political ambition …. He wants to help in terms of improving the economic and overall prevailing situation of the country, which I am sure he can do very well,” he added.

Hashmat, an influential businessman and grand chieftain of Afghanistan’s nomadic Kochi population, shared that during the closed-door meetings he held with his brother, the former had told him that he would soon make an announcement of a team comprising Afghan intellectuals working towards that aim.

The group would play a tangible role for stability in Afghanistan without harbouring any desire for governmental positions or ministries, Ghani said and emphasised that the clear rationale and motive behind the prospective team would be to work for the welfare of the people of Afghanistan and “not creating disturbances like the previous national security advisers”.

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When asked who was to be blamed for the failure of Ashraf Ghani’s government, Hashmat Ghani admitted that the former president was not acquainted with the ground realities “while those around him faked on him and kept on feeding him lies”.

‘Indians sponsored proxies’

Commenting on the proxies seeded across Afghan soil, Hashmat said that India had “played the game marvellously”, adding that each dollar that the country spent on Afghanistan translated into $100 damage to the entire region.

Ghani, who had acknowledged the new rulers in Kabul when foreign forces were only days away from their withdrawal, had been meeting Taliban leaders and later publicly announced his support to the new rulers to avoid further conflict in the wake of the United States' botched withdrawal from the war-torn country.

The country’s economy has been in free fall, worsened by the US sanctions and its diplomatic and financial isolation. The Taliban has urged the international community to recognise its new government as it struggles to revive the economy battered by decades of war and foreign interventions.