Hamid Karzai

Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Wednesday he invited the Taliban to invade and capture Kabul after the sitting president, Ashraf Ghani, fled the country. Karzai said he held the door for the Taliban so they could “protect the population” and ensure Kabul did not “fall into chaos.”

While justifying the U.S. incursion into Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks, Egyptian-American political analyst Magdi Khalil criticized the “naive” and “unrealistic” American attempt at “nation-building” and bringing democracy and human rights to the “extremist Islamic wasteland” of Afghanistan.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday on CBS’s “Face The Nation” that he was discussing the current Taliban takeover of Afghanistan a week ago with the president who he identified as “Karzai.”

Former President of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani resurfaced in a video posted to his Facebook profile late Wednesday confirming he is currently in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) after fleeing the Taliban and claiming reports he stole $169 million on the way out were “completely baseless.”

Turkey reportedly canceled its plans to provide security at Kabul airport after Western forces withdraw from Afghanistan but is willing to provide security and technical support “if the Taliban request it,” two Turkish government sources told Reuters anonymously Monday.

Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai is reportedly cooperating with the Taliban in building a new government and securing the peaceful transition of power.

President Joe Biden repeatedly condemned the idea of “nation-building” in Afghanistan during his speech on Monday, but in 2003 he defended the idea of standing with the Afghan people.

China’s state-run Global Times published an interview Friday with Hamid Karzai, whose 13-year term as president of Afghanistan was defined by widespread corruption and an opium cultivation boom, in which Karzai praised Beijing’s relationship with Kabul and disparaged the “failure” of U.S. forces there.

The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden agreed on Monday to grant Turkey’s Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan a “lead role” in providing security at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport after U.S. forces withdraw from Afghanistan in September, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Thursday.

The Chinese government is trying to organize peace talks between rival factions in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, which sent a delegation to Beijing last month to meet with Chinese officials.

Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai gave an interview to the Associated Press on Wednesday in which he pronounced Afghanistan to be in “terrible shape” and criticized the U.S. government for not doing enough to rebuild the country.

Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai issued a statement on Wednesday declaring he “very strongly opposes” the strategy announced by U.S. President Donald Trump because it is “against peace and the national interest of Afghanistan.”

When Seddique Mateen, the father of Orlando mass murderer Omar Mateen, turned up at a Hillary Clinton rally in Florida on Tuesday, the Clinton campaign scrambled to tell the media he wasn’t an invited guest, and they didn’t even know he was there, although he somehow managed to get a plum seat close to the candidate.

One of the latest Hillary Clinton emails to be revealed by the State Department included discussion of an Afghan national on the CIA’s payroll – an exchange “presumed to cause damage to the national security” under President Obama’s executive orders.

The newly-elected president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, told U.S. soldiers on Monday that he was grateful for their help in helping to secure the promise of a better future for his country.