Former head guardian of Ashraf Ghani hides in cellar
The former bodyguard of the former Afghan president claims that Ashraf Ghani fled the country with millions of dollars, hiding cellars in Kabul from militants Taliban (a terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation).
According to Richard Pedlebury, Daily Mail author The general guard of the presidential palace hides in the basement of a modest Afghan house in a neglected area, sitting among large white bags of rice, plastic buckets, dusty boilers, empty cages, power tools, broken mechanisms.
Since the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan on August 15, Brigadier General Piraz Ata Sharifi has become one of the country's most wanted refugees. Less than five months ago, the general was sitting at a negotiating table in Kabul with General Sir Nick Carter, the highest-ranking British soldier. The Afghan has a photo on his phone that confirms this fact. Until a few weeks ago, he was in charge of the day-to-day security of President Ashraf Ghani, who, as head of state, was the personification, at least in theory, of Western efforts to ensure a democratic pluralist Afghanistan.
Now the president has fled, the Western-backed government is a thing of the past, and General Sharifi, who, to his despair, has not been given the evacuation of VIPs, must pay with his own head. The wanted announcements appeared at Taliban checkpoints throughout Kabul. They show the general's photo: “This is General Piraz Sharifi, who also has the nickname” Ata “. He was a special guardian of the president. He now has 300 weapons with him. If you know of this person or their whereabouts, you should inform the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. One million Afghans will be rewarded for such information. “
One million Afghans equals £ 10,000 – a wealth in a country where 90 percent of people live on less than £ 1.60 a day, notes Richard Pedlebury.
The general is thus forced to literally lead an underground existence, moving from one basement to another dirty basement.
“It was in one of these shelters that we met him last week with photographer Jamie Wiseman,” says Richard Pedlebury. “We had an unusual encounter with one powerful character.” During our meeting, the general expressed anger and despair that he had been abandoned and “betrayed” not only by those he defended, but also by the West, whose affairs he had served.
He showed me the requests he had sent to the Ministry of Defense in London and to Member of Parliament Johnny Mercer, whom he claimed had trained him in Afghanistan. He also pledged to expose the corruption of his former boss, who he said fled the country with bags containing hundreds of millions of dollars of government money.
According to him, the general has evidence of this palace video surveillance. He shares evidence if he can escape. That's pretty big if. And it's getting bigger every day. Because his wanted list has been announced in the Afghan capital … His messages in our WhatsApp correspondence are becoming more pathetic and hopeless. The general's fear of arrest is compounded by the finding that the search is led by the cruelest member of the new Taliban government.
One of the general's brothers was already recognized on the street and was shot at. The other is safe and lives in the UK. But what scenario should the general follow? “
According to the general, he was a military officer for more than two decades, and in 2005 he joined the security forces of the presidential palace, his salary being paid by the US government. He claims that in 2010 and later he was trained by members of the British army. One of them was Johnny Mercer, now a member of the British Parliament for Plymouth Moore View. Mercer was former captain of the Royal Artillery and during this time served as a training and liaison officer for the Afghan forces.
At the beginning of 2021, General Sharifi was in charge of about 1,500 selected members of the presidential security forces. They were the most reliable soldiers in the Afghan army. One of the general's duties was to ensure the disarmament or dispatch of other, perhaps less loyal, militias before the president visited the place he was guarding.
“He showed me some of his photos alongside his former Afghan president, Hamid Karzai – Richard Pedlebury continues his story. – After taking power, the Taliban removed all photographs of President Ghani, who replaced Karzai in 2014.
On August 15, the general left home to work as usual in the presidential palace. “Then I went to the Department of Defense before the president.” He was to travel there and discuss the protection of Kabul (from the approaching Taliban). One of my tasks was to disarm the soldiers who were guarding the ministry before the president arrived, for the sake of his security, “said Sharifi. – We were waiting for the president there. But then they called me and said that instead of coming to the Ministry of Defense, the president went to the airport. The Minister of Defense also fled. So is my boss. It was the same with everyone close to Ghani's family and entourage. “
” The president never told us he was leaving, “says the general. “They just ran away and left me.”
Ghani posted a message on Facebook stating that he had left to “avoid bloodshed.” The world did not know where it was going until August 18, when the United Arab Emirates announced that it was accepting the president and his family for “humanitarian reasons.”
Ashraf Ghani himself was silent until the beginning of September, when in a statement on Twitter he described the allegations of corruption against him as “completely untrue”.
Reuters reported that the president left Afghanistan “in a helicopter full of cash.” In fact, he had so much money that he had to leave some because they didn't fit in the helicopter.
General Sharifi told Richard Pedlebury, “I have footage from the palace camera system that shows that a man from an Afghan bank brought Ghana a lot of money before he left. Hundreds of millions, maybe billions of dollars. There were many large bags and they were heavy. It wasn't rice. “This money was intended for the foreign exchange market.” Dollars were brought in for this purpose every Thursday. Instead, the president took them. Ghani knew what would happen in the end. So he took all the money and ran away. I never thought he would. But I have proof that I share when I'm in a safe place. “
According to Richard Pedlebury, the former bodyguard of the Afghan president had a snag with a safe place: “On August 16, the general tried to get to the airport, but he could not. Since then, his family of fourteen, including his university-educated wife and three children, the youngest, a nine-month-old son, has been on the run. “Sometimes when people come to visit [the house above the cellar where he's hiding], I have to cover my little daughter's mouth so she doesn't tell me I live here underground,” he said. – He cries at night and says, “Father, please wake up, the Taliban are coming.” His family already knew what the Taliban could do if they found the general. He showed me a video of a man sitting in a hospital wheelchair on his phone with bloody bandages covering the wound on his side. “This is my brother Ajal three days ago,” he said. “He worked with me in the palace and also hid.” He went to town to sell jewelry and buy food, but Taliban fighters recognized him on the street. He was shot immediately. He survived only because he managed to escape to a nearby house. The owner hid it and then took it to the hospital. “
When no one helped him, but hid him from his immediate arrest and retaliation, the general turned to the Internet and WhatsApp to find a way out. He has a photograph on his phone of British General Sir Nick Carter, taken on the date “at 18:00 on 11 May 2021”. According to media reports the day before, the British chief of defense was in Kabul to meet with Ghani and the head of the Pakistani armed forces. Sharifi's attempts by Sharifi to take advantage of the British scheme to eliminate “vulnerable and vulnerable” people from Afghanistan have met with formal responses.
This week, the general's son-in-law in Kabul received a written request from an official of the 9th District of the Taliban's Interior Ministry that General Sharifi must resign immediately. The general said the request came from the new interior minister, Sir Haqqani, who ordered all district authorities to track him down. Haqqani is the leader of a terrorist faction known as the Haqqani Network. It has a long-standing relationship with al-Qaeda (a terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation) and has carried out some of the bloodiest suicide bombings in Afghanistan. Haqqani is now in charge of Afghanistan's national security – and is hunting for a general.