The Doha deal signed between the Taliban and the United States paved the way for the collapse of the US-backed Afghan government, former Afghan National Security Advisor Hamdullah Mohib has said. Under the deal, signed in February 2020, the US agreed to withdraw all foreign troops from Afghanistan in exchange for the Taliban’s assurance to share power with the erstwhile Afghan government. 

Mohib, who was former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani’s top security official leading the war efforts against the Taliban, spoke this week with CBS news for the first time since the collapse of the US-backed Afghan government. He blamed the Afghan leadership for not seeing the near certainty of the American withdrawal among many reasons for the loss of the Republic. 

On August 15, the day Kabul fell to the Taliban, Ghani along with the people in his inner circle fled the country, a move Mohib justified in the interview, saying he had to do it as he didn't want history to be repeated by having another Afghan president hanged. The Taliban, he claimed, were already in Kabul by the time they left. 

In 1996, when the Taliban first came to Kabul, they tortured and brutally killed former Afghan president Najibullah. His body was later hung from a lamp post in one of Kabul's squares.

In a shocking disclosure, the former NSA claimed that ISI, Pakistan's intelligence agency, had ordered their Taliban operatives to execute Ghani. 

“We had our own credible information, the Americans had too, and also such information was obtained from open sources that the ISI had a plan to disgrace the president of Afghanistan and the Taliban had planned to execute the president,” he said in the interview.

On Zalmay Khalilzad, former US special envoy who negotiated the Doha deal, he said, “Unfortunately, Zalmai Khalilzad was bringing the Taliban to Kabul, and he even was telling us, do not put up a defense.” 

Failure to chart out alternative plans in the face of American withdrawal was repeatedly blamed on the former Afghan leadership as the primary reason behind the ultimate collapse. On Friday, Mohib conceded the mistake. 

"I think, you know, not seeing that writing on the wall about the withdrawal ... We should have understood that the United States had made its decision and would withdraw under any circumstances. And I think that probably is one of the reasons we weren't able to secure another outcome," Mohib told CBS.

Months leading to the collapse in August saw political disunity among key Afghan leaders and their failure to form a unity government for petty self-interests. In the final weeks of the war in August, the trust deficit among key regional strongmen, who were the supporters of the Republic, grew so large that, according to multiple reports, even money and supplies were stopped from Kabul.