Trump Threatens Taliban
Taliban Declare Afghanistan Will Not Allow US Military Base at Bagram
On Sunday 21 September Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban denied that any talks were underway to hand over Bagram Air Base back to the US, claiming “no agreement over even an inch of Afghanistan’s soil is possible,” Tolo News reported.
During a press conference on Friday, US President Donald Trump told reporters that his government is in talks with the Taliban to reoccupy the base, which US troops abandoned during their withdrawal from the country, after two decades of occupation, in August 2021.
Trump, though he refused to comment on direct military action to regain the base, nevertheless threatened the Taliban, telling reporters if they don’t hand over the base to the US “you are going to find out what I am gonna do.”
In a social media post, a day later on Saturday, Trump repeated his threats to Afghanistan in a much more explicit form saying, “if Afghanistan doesn’t give Bagram airbase back to those that built it, the US, bad things are going to happen.”
Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan is located nearly 40 miles from the capital Kabul. It is an old base built in the 1950s with the help of the Soviet Union at the time. It was occupied by US forces after they invaded the country in 2001.
US forces modernized and expanded the base into one of the biggest in the world. They also built a massive detention center at the base which was identified as one of the “black sites” during the so-called global war on terror.
Several Afghan prisoners were reportedly tortured at the facility over their alleged links to Al-Qaeda or Islamic State (ISIS) groups during the two decades of its existence and kept there for years without trial or charge. This led several people to call the detention center the “Guantanamo of Afghanistan”.
Trump’s first administration signed the Doha agreement with the Taliban in 2020, agreeing to cease the occupation of Afghanistan. At the time, Trump had hailed the agreement as a deal to end the “endless wars” and save US tax payers’ money.
Attempts to surround China
The attempt to reoccupy Bagram Air Base is widely seen as a US effort to regain a strategic base in Central Asia, near Chinese borders, as part of its larger strategy to surround China.
Trump has often complained about China’s rising influence in Afghanistan and Central Asia, claiming that since the US withdrawal Bagram has fallen into Beijing’s hands.
On Thursday, during his visit to the UK, Trump had claimed that he wants to take back Bagram base “not because of Afghanistan but because of China”.
China has no military bases outside of its territory, except one in Djibouti, whereas the US has around 800 such bases across the world.
Reacting to a question regarding Trump’s attempts to regain the base, Lin Jian, official spokesperson of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed on Friday his country’s hope that “stirring up tension and confrontation in the region will not be supported.”
Respect Doha agreement
On Sunday, the Taliban officially rejected Trump’s threats, asking his administration to stick to the provisions of the Doha agreement, under which “the US pledged that it will not use or threaten force against territorial integrity or political independence of Afghanistan, nor interfere in its internal affairs.”
“It is necessary that they [the US] remain faithful to their commitments,” Taliban spokesperson, Hamdullah Firat was quoted saying by Tolo News.
During Friday’s press conference, Trump claimed that though his government signed an agreement with the Taliban to end the occupation, abandoning Bagram base was not part of the deal.
Trump repeated his accusation of the Joe Biden administration for the hurried withdrawal, saying it was the “most embarrassing day in the history of” the US.
The Biden administration oversaw the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, advancing the date of the withdrawal from September to August 2021, after Trump lost the 2020 presidential elections.
Reacting to Trump’s threats of bad consequences, Afghanistan’s chief of staff under the country’s Ministry of Defense, Qari Fasihuddin Fitrat, was quoted saying that “we assure the people of Afghanistan that no agreement over even an inch of our soil is possible.”
He refuted Trump’s comments and media reports that claimed an exchange of prisoners and financial gains for Afghanistan in return for the base. He called these claims and reports baseless, even accusing the US of making these secondary claims of political settlements after “failing to take it [the base] by force”.
 | A guest post by
|