Hamid Karzai: The Taliban were invited to enter Kabul to stop looting

Karzai, who was the country’s president for 13 years after the Taliban were first ousted in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, refused to leave

Hamid Karzai said the Taliban had been invited into Kabul deliberately (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

The Taliban did not take the Afghan capital — they were invited in, says the man who issued the invitation.

In an Associated Press interview, former Afghan President Hamid Karzai offered some of the first insights into the secret and sudden departure of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani — and how he came to invite the Taliban into the city “to protect the population so that the country, the city doesn’t fall into chaos and the unwanted elements who would probably loot the country, loot shops.”