Afghan Taliban rejects Trump threats over taking back Bagram airbase

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

The Taliban has rejected United States President Donald Trump’s request that it manus implicit the Bagram airbase that Washington ran during its 20-year warfare successful Afghanistan, dismissing Trump’s menace that “bad things” volition hap if this does not travel to pass.

The Taliban said connected Sunday that “Afghanistan’s independency and territorial integrity are of the utmost importance” and called connected the US to uphold anterior agreements that it would not edifice to force.

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“Accordingly, it is erstwhile again underscored that, alternatively than repeating past failed approaches, a argumentation of realism and rationality should beryllium adopted,” Afghanistan’s rulers said.

Bagram, which was the US’s largest subject tract successful Afghanistan, is simply a ample airbase located 50km (31 miles) northbound of Kabul that served arsenic 1 of the US’s cardinal subject hubs during its two-decade warfare against the Taliban. The war, which followed the September 11, 2001, attacks successful New York and Washington by al-Qaeda, ended successful 2021 with Washington’s abrupt and chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Thousands of radical were imprisoned astatine the tract for years without complaint oregon proceedings by US forces during its alleged “war connected terror”, and galore of them were abused oregon tortured.

The Taliban retook the installation successful 2021 pursuing the US withdrawal and the illness of the Afghan government.

Over the past week, Trump has expressed a keen involvement successful reacquiring the airbase.

“We’re talking present to Afghanistan and we privation it backmost and we privation it backmost soon, close away. And if they don’t bash it, if they don’t bash it, you’re going to find retired what I’m gonna do,” Trump said to reporters astatine the White House connected Saturday.

Trump archetypal announced that helium was moving to instrumentality the basal backmost during a authorities sojourn to the United Kingdom successful a property league alongside the UK’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Trump delivered a connection that caught the attraction of policymakers successful Beijing, saying, “We’re trying to get it backmost due to the fact that they request things from us. We privation that basal back. But 1 of the reasons we privation the basal is, arsenic you know, it’s an hr distant from wherever China makes its atomic weapons.”

The atomic weapons Trump referred to are apt astatine China’s investigating scope astatine Lop Nur successful the occidental Xinjiang province.

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

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

Afghan officials person expressed staunch absorption to a renewed US beingness successful the country. Zakir Jalaly, a Foreign Ministry official, said “Afghans person ne'er accepted overseas subject beingness successful their onshore passim history”, but added that the 2 countries request to prosecute successful “economic and governmental relations based connected bilateral respect and communal interests”.

Fasihuddin Fitrat, a elder Ministry of Defence official, said a “deal implicit adjacent an inch of Afghanistan’s ungraded is not possible. We don’t request it.”

Bagram was built during the Cold War by the Soviet Union, which initially started operation erstwhile the Afghan authorities astatine the clip turned to Moscow for enactment successful the aboriginal 1950s. The airbase served Soviet operations successful the state for decades until they withdrew successful the precocious 1980s.

The US revamped the installation pursuing its ain concern of Afghanistan decades later, turning the basal into a sprawling mini colony with retail facilities that served US soldiers there.