President Ashraf Ghani says his basic goal is to hand power to his elected successor and through the will of the people, quelling recent rumors about the establishment of an interim government in the country as part of peace efforts.
Talking to CNN on Friday, President Ghani, who was joined by First Lady Rula Ghani, said the message of the second round of the peace negotiations in Doha “is can we agree on a goal that the international community and the region are agreed with us, namely “a sovereign, democratic, united Afghanistan at peace with itself and the region.”
He added that if that goal becomes accepted, “then we can move forward.”
“If the objective of the Taliban is to dominate and give us the peace of the grave, that will have very negative consequences,” Ghani said.
“My basic goal is to be able to hand power, through the will of the people, to my elected successor. This is crucial to enable us to both honor the sacrifice of our civilians, our activists, and others,” Ghani said. “One thing needs to be clear; the Afghan society is not willing to go back and we’re not a type of society that the Taliban-type approach of the past can be imposed on us. That was the peace of the graveyard. We want a positive peace where all of us together overcome our past, embrace each other and together rebuild an Afghanistan that can be what I call a roundabout.”
Ghani said that since 2015, U.S. lives lost in Afghanistan “is 98, while we the Afghan people have lost over 40,000 civilians and military… We’re assuming responsibility for our future, so if the U.S. would like to withdraw, all we ask for is a process that is predictable.”
Ghani said the incoming Biden administration has an immense opportunity to work with Afghanistan “to define what U.S. security interests in Afghanistan and the region are, an agreement on the future stability of Afghanistan, guaranteed both by the region and the international community is essential to end forty years of conflict, the process must be truly owned by owned and led by the Afghan government and the Afghan people, and the scale and scope of U.S. presence in Afghanistan need to be defined.”
