Blinken Misspoke About Afghan President

MENA: We discovered that on August 22, 2021, in an interview on the CBS news show Face the Nation, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken discussed the situation in Afghanistan in a one on one interview with reporter Major Garrett. In response to one of Garrett’s questions, Blinken said, “And by the way, I was on the phone with- with President Karzai the day before when he was telling me his intent, as he put it, to fight to the death. Well, the next day he was gone.”

However, the President who was in charge of Afghanistan and suddenly left the country was Ashraf Ghani. According to Reuter’s, President Ashraf Ghani fled the country on August 15, 2021. Ghani, who holds a doctorate from Columbia University, had been in power for seven years. 

Karzai was Afghanistan’s former head of state. Ex-president Karzai led the first Afghan government after the Taliban were ousted in 2001 and served as president until 2014 according to the Wall Street Journal. 

While Blinken obviously made an error in the interview, there is reporting that the former president is interested in putting himself back into the political spotlight. Karzai appears to be meeting with the Taliban since the departure of Ghani, so it would not be out of the question that the Secretary of State was in contact with Karzai. 

Still, the most recent president of Afghanistan was Ghani, so we rate this as false.