'We want Bagram back': Trump says US will reclaim Afghan airbase; targets China

United States president Donald Trump connected Thursday said helium was moving to "get back" Bagram airbase, which the United States gave up power of aft the 2021 Taliban takeover of Afghanistan."We're trying to get it back, by the way, that could beryllium a small breaking news. We're trying to get it backmost due to the fact that they request things from us. We privation that basal back," Trump said astatine a property league with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.Trump claimed his volition to instrumentality American forces to Afghanistan’s Bagram Airbase is due to the fact that “China present controls Bagram.”About a period earlier, Trump had suggested the US mightiness instrumentality to Afghanistan, saying, “We are going to support a tiny unit connected Bagram” to antagonistic China’s increasing influence.Trump stressed that his absorption connected Bagram was not astir Afghanistan itself. “We wanted to support this basal due to the fact that of China, not due to the fact that of Afghanistan,” helium said, noting the airbase’s proximity to China’s atomic facilities, “just an hour” away, arsenic its cardinal strategical value.

Why is Trump eyeing Bagram airbase?

Bagram Airbase has agelong been 1 of the United States’ astir important subject assets successful South Asia, valued for some its determination and its capabilities.

Located astir 40 kilometres northbound of Kabul, it sits adjacent to the borders of China, Pakistan, Iran, and Central Asia, giving the US a forward-operating hub adjacent immoderate of the world’s astir volatile regions. Its proximity to China’s Xinjiang region, wherever Beijing maintains atomic and subject facilities, made it peculiarly important for American strategical planning. During the US beingness successful Afghanistan, Bagram was the largest American airbase successful the country.

It had aggregate runways susceptible of handling dense bombers and transport aircraft, housed thousands of US and Nato troops astatine its peak, and included extended infrastructure specified arsenic bid centers, detention facilities, and logistics hubs. This made it the nervus halfway of US subject operations successful Afghanistan for astir 2 decades. Beyond Afghanistan, Bagram gave Washington the quality to task powerfulness crossed South and Central Asia, transportation retired surveillance, enactment counterterrorism missions, and show determination adversaries similar China, Russia, Iran, and Pakistan. Symbolically too, the basal represented the standard of America’s subject footprint successful the region. Its abrupt abandonment during the 2021 withdrawal was seen by galore analysts arsenic a strategical mistake, arsenic it near the installation unfastened to Taliban power and raised concerns astir imaginable Chinese involvement successful the site.