Former US President Donald Trump has warned that China will start using the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. American troops left the base this year as part of their complete withdrawal from the country.
“We would have kept Bagram because it is next to China,” Trump told Fox News. “And it is one hour away from their nuclear facility, and we gave that up too.”
And now China’s going to take over Bagram, in my opinion.
The former president once again criticized the “embarrassing” withdrawal of US forces, which he said was “really a surrender.”
Trump has argued in the past that it was a mistake to remove US forces from the Bagram Airfield, formerly the largest US military base in Afghanistan. “It has total access to China, Iran, and Afghanistan,” Trump said in August when Washington was frantically evacuating American nationals and Afghan helpers from Kabul, which had just fallen into the hands of the Taliban.
In September, US News & World Report quoted a source saying that Beijing has been studying the possibility of sending troops and foreign investment program staffers to Bagram. Other unverified reports claimed that foreign planes, possibly Chinese, were landing in Bagram after the Americans had left.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin denied media reports that the Taliban could hand over the air base to China. “This is purely fake news,” he said at the time.
In October, Afghanistan’s TOLOnews TV channel quoted a Taliban official denying that there were any foreign troops in the country.
Commander of US Central Command General Kenneth McKenzie told a Senate committee in September that “it was not feasible to hold Bagram airport,” and US soldiers were going to leave the base eventually as part of the withdrawal of all American forces from Afghanistan that was completed on August 30.
The US and their NATO allies invaded Afghanistan in 2001, a month after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, as part of Washington’s global war on terrorism.
After nearly two decades of Islamist insurgency and Western occupation, the Taliban reconquered the country in a sweeping offensive, which culminated in the capture of Kabul with little to no resistance in August. The Taliban’s rapid advance coincided with the final stage of the withdrawal of US-led forces.
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