The comment by Amrullah Saleh, former Acting Interior Minister and President Ghani’s running mate as his first vice president for the upcoming presidential elections, against those who claim that terror groups control nearly half of Afghanistan’s territory have faced mixed reaction from members of the public and other social media users.
In a twitter post, Saleh invited the people to join him for a tour of the country to reject the claims of territory control by anti-government armed militants.
Saleh said that this falsehood and fake news is mostly spread by “stooges, agents and idiots”.
“A challenge: Those who claim that terror groups controls nearly half of Afg are invited to visit my office in Kabul & join us for a tour of the country by road, by plane, by bike, on horse and by foot. This falsehood & fake news is mostly spread by stooges, agents & idiots,” Saleh tweeted on Sunday.
His challenge was accepted by many social media users and Kabul residents. They invited Mr. Saleh to join them in travelling to what they called insecure parts of the country to see how “difficult” it is to reach there.
“Let’s travel from Kabul to Nimroz and see how the situation on the way to the province is,” a Kabul resident, Ahmad, said.
“Anyone who challenges others on a country tour, I am ready to pay the cost and lets go to Bot Khak [an area on the outskirts of Kabul] with me, to Chahar Asiab [district in Kabul] or to Hootkhail [area in Kabul] at a night,” Khalid, a Kabul resident, told TOLOnews.
“Then you travel in armored vehicle in Kabul which is the biggest city of Afghanistan and you stop traffic while travelling around,” said Abdullah, a resident in Balkh province.
“Have you so far travelled from Kabul to Kandahar by road?” asked Zia Ahmadi, a social media user.
Meanwhile, Saleh came up with a response to the comments and said his matrix for measurement is population by bringing a comment as an example which says “You rightly said, yesterday I & my friend drove from Kabul all way to Kunar province. We saw farmers planting, girls going to school”.
Recently, a report by Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said that the Afghan government’s sovereignty is currently on the lowest compared to the last 18 years.