By Isabel Vincent | 28 August 2021
NEW YORK POST — Days after Afghan president Ashraf Ghani fled Kabul, his artist daughter Mariam Ghani urged her 3,000-plus Instagram followers to sign an online petition — demanding that the US and “governments around the world” come to the rescue of refugees, including cultural workers, stuck in Afghanistan and at the mercy of the marauding Taliban.
By that time, news had already spread that her father and mother, Afghanistan’s first lady Rula Ghani, were ensconced in relative luxury in the United Arab Emirates and that her father had reportedly spirited tens of millions of dollars out of Afghanistan when they fled on Aug. 15. …
Her brother Tarek, 39, who has a limited social media presence, watched the fast-moving chaos in Afghanistan from the $1.2 million Washington, DC, townhouse that he shares with his wife, Beth Pearson. They are a rising power couple in the US capital: Pearson, a Rhodes Scholar, is a senior aide to Sen. Elizabeth Warren; Tarek, a professor of business strategy, was an advisor to Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign.
Tarek and his sister have spent their lives connected to elites within the Democratic Party and owe their education and, in part, livelihoods to billionaire Democratic donors — the same power players who have bankrolled their father throughout his career as a technocrat at the World Bank and in leadership positions in his native Afghanistan.
Ashraf, 72, became Afghanistan’s president in 2014, but before that he raked in hundreds of thousands annually as chair of the Institute for State Effectiveness, a Washington, DC, nonprofit he co-founded in 2007. The group works to “develop integrated approaches to state building” and around 2007 received a $40 million grant from the Clinton Global Initiative, the non-profit founded by the former president.
His wife, Rula, 73, is co-chair of the Afghan Women’s Council at Georgetown University, alongside former US first ladies Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush.
Ashraf’s group has also been supported by grants from the Open Society Foundations, set up by billionaire philanthropist George Soros, who has donated billions to liberal causes around the world.
Ahsraf’s connections to the billionaire and the Clintons opened doors for his children in elite academic and political circles, a political observer who knows the family told The Post. […]
When Christ in the gospels said money was the root of all evils I suppose he was talking about this gaggle of mooks. It is amazing how quickly people jump in to make a Faustian deal for themselves.
I immigrated to US in 1968 and have lived a good life in north San Diego county. In retrospect, I think that I enjoyed the best years this country had to offer. The future looks bleak. Way to many Indians nowadays, not enough Chiefs willing to fight for justice and mercy.