Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that Mohammad Ashraf Ghani stole the election just more effective than his competitor at stealing votes.

 Pompeo added that Ghani was never asked to step down from power.

“He would think that I did, but I didn’t. I was incredibly frustrated with president Ghani, it took us to step in and finally get all the Afghans to the negotiating table. This was an effort that president Obama had tried to undertake even a little bit before that I just to get the conversations going and we ultimately achieved, and President Ghani was against that. He didn’t want to do that... He stole the election just more effective than his competitor at stealing votes,” Pompeo said.

Speaking at the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, Pompeo said that Ashraf Ghani, the former president of Afghanistan, was opposed to the talks between “the United States and the Taliban.”

“President Ghani wasn’t up for that, didn’t want to participate in it and that was most unfortunate, because in the end, you see what happens: Unlike Zelensky who chose to stay, President Ghani hops on an airplane and heads to someplace to go live a very nice peaceful life while there so many people were suffering in Afghanistan,” Pompeo said.

Hashmat Ghani Ahmadzai, the brother of former president Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, rejected the remarks made against his brother by the former US Secretary of State.

"Now they want to cover up his faults in this way and at the same time create another hostility or war of words among Afghan politicians like they have always done,” Hashmat Ghani said.

"The remarks of Pompeo about Ashraf Ghani are completely true. Ghani's approach was that it was either him or nobody,” said Sayed Javad Sajjadi, a university lecturer.

From 2018 to 2021, Mike Pompeo served as the US Secretary of State, and it was during this time that “the US and the Taliban” signed the Doha agreement.