Have asked my guard to shoot me if I get wounded, says Amrullah Saleh who is leading anti-Taliban forces in Panjshir Valley

"I don't want to surrender to the Taliban ever," the former vice-president of Afghanistan said.

London: Amrullah Saleh, the former vice-president of Afghanistan, who is now leading the Resistance Front against Taliban in Panjshir Valley, delineated the sequence of events that unfolded as Kabul fell to the outfit and how Afghan leadership abandoned the people of the war-ravaged country in the hour of need. Writing for a UK newspaper, Saleh, 48, who has declared himself as caretaker president of Afghanistan after former president Ashraf Ghani fled the country, says he believes those politicians who leave their country in moments of crisis betray its very soil. He revealed how Afghan officials went underground instead of fighting the Taliban as the outfit fighters advanced towards Kabul last month.