Afghan Taliban rejects Trump threats over taking back Bagram airbase

Donald Trump has pushed to regain Bagram, citing proximity to China’s nuclear facilities.

The Taliban has rejected United States President Donald Trump’s demand that it hand over the Bagram airbase that Washington ran during its 20-year war in Afghanistan, dismissing Trump’s threat that “bad things” will happen if this does not come to pass.

The Taliban said on Sunday that “Afghanistan’s independence and territorial integrity are of the utmost importance” and called on the US to uphold prior agreements that it would not resort to force.

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“Accordingly, it is once again underscored that, rather than repeating past failed approaches, a policy of realism and rationality should be adopted,” Afghanistan’s rulers said.

Bagram, which was the US’s largest military site in Afghanistan, is a large airbase located 50km (31 miles) north of Kabul that served as one of the US’s key military hubs during its two-decade war against the Taliban. The war, which followed the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington by al-Qaeda, ended in 2021 with Washington’s abrupt and chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Thousands of people were imprisoned at the site for years without charge or trial by US forces during its so-called “war on terror”, and many of them were abused or tortured.

The Taliban retook the facility in 2021 following the US withdrawal and the collapse of the Afghan government.

Over the last week, Trump has expressed a keen interest in reacquiring the airbase.

“We’re talking now to Afghanistan and we want it back and we want it back soon, right away. And if they don’t do it, if they don’t do it, you’re going to find out what I’m gonna do,” Trump said to reporters at the White House on Saturday.

Trump first announced that he was working to take the base back during a state visit to the United Kingdom in a press conference alongside the UK’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Trump delivered a message that caught the attention of policymakers in Beijing, saying, “We’re trying to get it back because they need things from us. We want that base back. But one of the reasons we want the base is, as you know, it’s an hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons.”

The nuclear weapons Trump referred to are likely at China’s testing range at Lop Nur in the western Xinjiang province.

“The airfield has an 11,800-foot [3,597m] runway capable of serving bomber and large cargo aircraft,” the US Air Force says of Bagram on its website.

Trump, who has harshly criticised his predecessor, former US President Joe Biden, for the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan — which Trump himself had initiated during his first term — said the US gave the Taliban “Bagram for nothing”.

Afghan officials have expressed staunch opposition to a renewed US presence in the country. Zakir Jalaly, a Foreign Ministry official, said “Afghans have never accepted foreign military presence in their land throughout history”, but added that the two countries need to engage in “economic and political relations based on bilateral respect and common interests”.

Fasihuddin Fitrat, a senior Ministry of Defence official, said a “deal over even an inch of Afghanistan’s soil is not possible. We don’t need it.”

Bagram was built during the Cold War by the Soviet Union, which initially started construction when the Afghan government at the time turned to Moscow for support in the early 1950s. The airbase served Soviet operations in the country for decades until they withdrew in the late 1980s.

The US revamped the facility following its own occupation of Afghanistan decades later, turning the base into a sprawling mini village with retail facilities that served US soldiers there.