Washington DC:
Donald Trump has made a new announcement with regard to Afghanistan – that the US is planning to go back. “Joe Biden gave it up…I think we should get it back”, he said, talking about armoured vehicles and the strategic Bagram Airbase. President Trump’s remarks came at a press briefing after his first Cabinet meeting since he took over commander-and-chief of the US armed forces.
Being more specific about what he meant, President Trump said “What has bothered me very much is that we gave billions and billions of dollars to Afghanistan, nobody knows that, and yet, we left behind all of that equipment, which would not have happened had I been president at the time.”
“We (US) were getting out under my presidency. I am the one who got our military presence to under 5,000, but we were going to keep Bagram (air base) – not because of Afghanistan, but because of China, because the air base is exactly one hour from where China makes its nuclear missiles. So, we were going to keep Bagram,” President Trump said.
He went on to say that “Bagraom airbase is the one of the biggest airbases in the world. It has one of the biggest and most powerful runways. Very heavy concrete and steel was used (to strengthen) it. Anything could be carried on it. And we gave it up – and you know who is occupying it at the moment? China. Because Biden gave it up. So, we’re going to keep that.”
Making it clear that the US only looks to keep a small troops presence in Afghanistan (especially Bagram), President Trump further noted that “America is now going to keep that (Bagram)”. He added that the US military will perform a “withdrawal of all the equipment left behind – about 40,000 armoured and military heavy vehicles” currently in the hands of the Taliban government in the country.
Nearly calling the manner in which the US withdrew from Afghanistan “disgraceful”, President Trump claimed that “In all fairness to Putin – When he saw that, he decided ‘Well, this is our time to go into Ukraine, because the timing seemed just right.”
Saying that Afghanistan is being able to stay afloat because of “billions of dollars of aid” by the US, which “nobody talked about”, and that, with him as President, “All of America seems to know about now”, President Trump said that “since we are sending aid, they (Afghan government) should give it back.”
In August 2021, amid deepening crisis in Afghanistan, then US President Joe Biden had defended his move for a complete withdrawal of troops from the war-torn country, saying that history will record this as a “logical, rational, and right decision”. Joe Biden’s decision had come twenty years after the US invasion of Afghanistan following the 9/11 terror attack in the United States.
Conservative estimates suggest that tens of thousands of lives were lost in the twenty-year war in Afghanistan.
There has been no official response, either from the Afghan Taliban or from China, which President Trump accused of having a military presence in Afghanistan.
The Bagram airbase was originally constructed by USSR during the Cold War, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when US too tried to grow its influence in Afghanistan. Many years after the Soviet withdrawal, and the fall of the erstwhile Soviet Union, the US returned to Afghanistan to wage a war on Osama bin Laden. It was then that the US took over Bagram airbase and strengthened it.