Afghanistan is a land that has repeatedly stood at the edge of transformation, only to be thrust backward each time by the very figures who proclaimed themselves its saviors. The country’s modern history is crowded with faces who arrived speaking the language of rescue but governed through monopoly, corruption, deception, and abdication of responsibility, each clearing the way for a fresh wave of destruction. Among them, the name Ashraf Ghani is no longer simply that of a failed politician. It has become the name of a bitter historical lesson: one in which the republic was suffocated from within, the state rotted from its core, and a country carrying millions of hopes, thousands of sacrifices, and twenty years of human and financial investment ultimately collapsed before the Taliban.
Ashraf Ghani was sworn in as President of Afghanistan on September 29, 2014, following an election beset from the outset by a legitimacy crisis, fraud allegations, widespread distrust, and backroom political bargaining. The National Unity Government that emerged was not the product of a transparent democratic process. It was the result of a fragile compromise. The republic was wounded from that very first day, because a republic does not die only when the Taliban enter Kabul. It dies the moment the people’s vote is rendered meaningless, the law becomes subject to deal-making, power is locked inside the narrow circle of the presidential palace, and the state ceases to be a national institution and becomes the personal property of a faction.
Ghani came to power wearing the face of a technocrat, speaking the language of academia, preaching state-building, and claiming to represent a break from outdated traditions. He presented himself as the intellectual force, the reformer, the crisis manager, and the architect of Afghanistan’s future. In practice, however, what emerged was neither a national government nor a civic republic. What was built was a form of centralized, closed, and monopolistic domination in which a small inner circle inside the palace decided the fate of the entire country. This system dressed itself in modern vocabulary while reproducing the oldest logic of power: eliminating rivals, co-opting and discarding allies, hollowing out institutions, marginalizing independent figures, dividing people into insiders and outsiders, and turning the state into an instrument for the survival of one clique.
In the years before Ghani, despite all the shortcomings, corruption, and weaknesses of the transitional administration and the Hamid Karzai era, real structures had been built in Afghanistan through the sacrifice and effort of countless people. Schools were constructed, universities expanded, media outlets took root, a national army and police force took shape, roads and administrative institutions were established, and women and young people gradually entered public life. For the first time in years, following the darkness of Taliban rule, the people of Afghanistan tasted a measure of freedom. These achievements were imperfect, but they were real. They were not the product of any single individual. They were the product of the resistance of people who stood against the Taliban, paid with their lives, and refused to let Afghanistan remain forever captive to the Taliban emirate.
That legacy, however, fell in 2014 into the hands of a man who treated it not as a national trust to be protected but as personal property to be exploited. Ghani viewed the republic not as a national covenant but as a platform for his own power. He did not believe in democracy; he used it. He had no respect for elections; he wanted them only as a veneer of legitimacy. He did not believe in institutions; he tolerated them only insofar as they served the palace. He had no faith in national participation; he permitted it only as long as it posed no threat to his power circle.
One of the most dangerous features of Ghani’s rule was the gradual dismantling of security and administrative institutions. His critics argue that the purging, rotation, and removal of experienced commanders, particularly within the army and police, inflicted serious damage on the country’s defensive capacity. The forced retirement of seasoned generals in successive waves, the installation of young and inexperienced figures in their place, the assignment of sensitive posts to individuals loyal to the palace’s inner circle, and the constant reshuffling of key officials left security management in a state of instability, mistrust, and confusion. A country at war required stability, experience, trust, and a clear chain of command. Instead of reinforcing those pillars, the palace turned them into testing grounds for political maneuvering.
Ghani applied the same approach to civilian governance. Independent ministers were not tolerated. Figures with genuine social or political constituencies were pushed to the margins. Decision-making authority shifted from institutions to the palace. Administration ceased to function according to law and became subject instead to personal decree, suspicion, and individual will. The result was nothing short of administrative paralysis. In a country that desperately needed participation, confidence-building, and collective management, Ghani erected new walls: between ethnic communities, between elites, between the state and the people, between the center and the provinces, and even between frontline soldiers and the country’s political leadership.
Among the most dangerous legacies Ashraf Ghani left behind was the cultivation of a clique of young, inexperienced, ambitious, and power-hungry figures. These individuals were known less for national experience, social roots, or commitment to their country than for their English fluency, foreign degrees, and Fulbright credentials, all wrapped in a technocratic veneer polished for international audiences. In public, they invoked ethnic identity, particularly Pashtun identity, to claim political legitimacy. Yet what bound this disparate group together was not national identity or conviction but a shared appetite for power, position, and privilege. Treating tradition with contempt, disregarding national ethics, and remaining detached from the suffering of ordinary people, they viewed politics not as public responsibility but as a ladder for personal advancement. That very mentality made them Ghani’s natural partners in the project of monopolizing power.
The true catastrophe was not that the Taliban advanced. The catastrophe was that a government with all its grand claims, all its international backing, all the sacrifices of its security forces, and all the hopes of a young generation was left without leadership at the decisive moment. On August 15, 2021, Ashraf Ghani fled Kabul on the same day the Taliban entered the capital. He later claimed he left to prevent bloodshed. But for millions of citizens of Afghanistan, that day was not a responsible decision. It was a leader abandoning his post. A president who had spent years speaking of the republic abandoned, at the republic’s hour of reckoning, the people, the security forces, the women, the youth, the civil servants, the journalists, the civil society activists, and everyone who had placed their faith in that system.
The fall of Kabul was not merely the fall of a city. It was the fall of trust. It was the fall of hope. It was the rupture of the bond between the people and their state. In the aftermath, the very concept of the republic became entangled in the minds of many with betrayal, desertion, corruption, and abandonment. A soldier who had fought for years watched his political commander flee the country. A woman who had attended school and university saw her future handed to the Taliban in a single day. A young person who had believed in elections, media, law, and reform watched all of those words crushed beneath the weight of a historic flight from responsibility.
Now, nearly five years into his silence and absence, if Ghani or those close to him were to re-enter the discourse on Afghanistan’s politics and present themselves as the rightful heirs of the republic, that would not merely be a political misstep. It would be an insult to the collective memory of the people of Afghanistan. A man who drove the republic to ruin cannot claim its inheritance. A man who fled at the moment of crisis cannot present himself from exile as a commander of salvation. A man who dismantled institutions cannot now speak of state-building. A man who never believed in genuine participation cannot claim to be a democrat.
The problem is not Ghani alone. The problem is the circle that still addresses him as “Wulsmishr” (Mr. President), still constructs myths around him, and still keeps his name alive in the hope that in some imagined return, they too might reclaim a post, an ambassadorship, a ministry, or a privilege. This circle belongs to the same opportunistic, mafia-like class that treats politics not as public service but as a market for dividing spoils. For this group, the republic is not a value, not a law, not the people’s vote, and not freedom. The republic is merely a brand name for returning to the same corrupt structure that was the primary cause of the previous system’s collapse.
The Republic of Afghanistan was not buried when Ghani fled on August 15, 2021. That day only made the corpse visible. The death had begun far earlier: the day the people’s vote was sacrificed to a political deal; the day power was imprisoned inside the palace; the day institutions were reduced to appendages of the ruling circle; the day loyalty replaced merit; the day experienced commanders were pushed aside; the day corruption, ethnic favoritism, and distrust displaced the national project; and the day the president, instead of listening to the voices of the people, declared himself the sole rational mind of the entire country.
Neither the return of Ashraf Ghani nor the continuation of Taliban rule is what Afghanistan needs today. Neither the Taliban emirate nor a repetition of that same centralized, corrupt, and palace-centric republic offers a way forward. The country needs an accountable, inclusive, and just order, one in which no individual, ethnic group, inner circle, or faction holds power as its own. If the Ghani era carries any warning for the future, it is this: a republic without accountability, justice, and genuine participation is hollow at its core and will collapse when crisis arrives. Afghanistan must not allow any political force, whether under the banner of an emirate or a republic, to again dominate the fate of its people without accountability. This country’s future can be built only on honest reckoning with the past, respect for the people’s will, justice, and the dignity of its citizens. Not forgetting. Not on deal-making. And not on the return of figures who abandoned the people in their darkest hours.
You can read the Persian version of this analysis here:
