Former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has arrived in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), according to the UAE’s foreign ministry, after Taliban forces took control of the country.
“The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation can confirm that the UAE has welcomed President Ashraf Ghani and his family into the country on humanitarian grounds,” it said in a statement on Wednesday.
The UAE’s state-run WAM news agency did not disclose where Ghani was in the nation in its statement.
Ghani departed Afghanistan on Sunday as the Taliban drew closer to Kabul, before the militants marched uncontested into the Afghan capital.
Ghani said in a Facebook post that the “Taliban have won” and that he left to escape a “bloodshed.”
Until Wednesday, his whereabouts were unclear, with rumors that he had gone to Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, or Oman.
This is not the first time the oil-rich Gulf country has welcomed previous leaders and their families, who are now considered persona non grata in their own country. Former Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, who was convicted in absentia to five years in jail, was welcomed in Dubai in 2017. The UAE also was Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto’s home during her eight years in exile before she was assassinated in her home country in 2007. Spain’s King Juan Carlos went into self-exile in the UAE in August last year as questions about the origins of his fortune grew.
