US wants key Afghan air base back

President Donald Trump said that the Bagram air base should not have been abandoned to the Taliban

US President Donald Trump has said he wants to regain control of the former Bagram air base in northeastern Afghanistan, which was hastily abandoned during the Taliban takeover four years ago.

“We should have never given it up,” Trump told reporters at the Oval Office on Friday. He added that during his trip to the UK the previous day, the US was negotiating the issue with the new Afghan government. “We want that base back,” he said.

American troops evacuated Bagram in July 2021, a month before Taliban militants seized Kabul, toppling the UN-backed government and ending the 20-year US occupation of the country.

Photos and videos of the looted base and abandoned military equipment became symbols of the failure of the US war in Afghanistan.

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Although Trump had negotiated the withdrawal of American troops during his first term, he blamed the fall of Kabul on former President Joe Biden, calling the chaotic departure of the last US soldiers “a disgrace.”

Zakir Jalaly, an Afghan Foreign Ministry official, wrote on X on Thursday that the people of Afghanistan would reject the return of American troops. “Afghanistan and the US need to engage with one another, and can have economic and political relations based on mutual respect, without the US maintaining any military presence in any part of Afghanistan,” he said.