President Donald Trump has been quietly pushing his national security officials for months to find a way to get Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan back from the Taliban, three people familiar with the matter told CNN.
Trump hinted at those discussions publicly for the first time on Thursday, telling reporters that his administration is working to regain control of the base, which lies an hour north of Kabul. The Taliban took it over following the collapse of the Afghan government and the US military withdrawal in 2021.
“We gave it to (the Taliban) for nothing,” Trump said during a joint press conference with UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer on Thursday. “We’re trying to get it back, by the way.”
The sources told CNN that the conversations about returning the base to US control date back at least to March. Trump and his senior national security officials believe the base is needed for several reasons, including to surveil China, whose border is under 500 miles away; gain access to rare earth elements and mining in Afghanistan; establish a counterterrorism node to target ISIS; and possibly reopen a diplomatic facility, the sources said.
But all of those objectives would require a US military presence, one of the sources said. And a deal that Trump stuck with the Taliban in 2020, during his first term, mandated a full withdrawal of US troops from the country.
It’s not clear whether or how the Taliban has been engaging with the US on relinquishing control of the key airfield. But Trump suggested on Thursday that the US has leverage over the group.
“We’re trying to get it back because (the Taliban) need things from us,” Trump told reporters in Buckinghamshire. “We want that base back.”
Trump has previously indicated that if the US withdrawal in 2021 had happened under his administration, he’d have kept control of Bagram, citing its strategic importance near the border between Afghanistan and China. Earlier this month he said that the Biden administration was “so stupid” for withdrawing US troops from the base in 2021.
Trump also said on Thursday that Bagram is near where China makes missiles, a claim he made back in March as well.
“We were going to get out, but we were going to keep Bagram, not because of Afghanistan but because of China, because it’s exactly one hour away from where China makes its nuclear missiles,” he said in March. “We were going to keep a small force on Bagram.”
The last US troops left Bagram Air Base in July 2021, CNN has reported. The base had been the center of US military power in Afghanistan for nearly two decades.
The two-mile runway was the jumping off point for military operations throughout the country, with space for cargo aircraft, fighter jets and attack helicopters. Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump all visited Bagram during their time in office, promising victory and a better future for Afghanistan. The base was also the target of numerous Taliban attacks over the years, including suicide bombings and rocket attacks.
When US troops left the base in 2021, they removed the equivalent of nearly 900 C-17 cargo loads and destroyed nearly 16,000 pieces of equipment in the process, US Central Command said at the time.
In 2023, the State Department released an after-action review of the withdrawal which found that the US’ decision to leave Bagram likely contributed to the chaotic US exit from the country as a whole, since it meant that Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul ” would be the only avenue for a possible noncombatant evacuation operation (NEO).”