American troops and other Western forces vacated the Bagram Air Base on Friday, effectively bringing to a close a 27-year military occupation in the country that began during the George Bush Jr Administration.
Their exit was possibly the most significant step in actualising US President Joe Biden’s plan to withdraw all American military personnel from Afghanistan before September 11, a date that will mark the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the US Pentagon.
Bagram’s importance
For decades, the Bagram Air Base has served as the centrepiece for Western military operations, acting as a transit point to and from a bloody war with the Taliban. When the US first invaded Afghanistan in 2001, the site at Bagram was merely rubble.
It had served as the site of several conflicts dating back to the 1950s, involving numerous warlord factions, some backed by the Soviet Union. Following the Soviets’ withdrawal in 1989, Bagram became the theatre of a war between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban.
But by 2011, it had exploded into a small city, comprising two runways, several shops, tens of thousands of residents and a notorious US prison facility. Occupancy first began shrinking at Bagram in 2014, when the US announced its first official withdrawal of troops. Now, with Bagram emptied, what remains of the US military in Afghanistan amounts to just 650 troops tasked with guarding the American embassy in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul.
Afghanistan’s future murky
The departure of American troops from Bagram, and indeed Afghanistan comes at a precarious moment for the war-torn nation. Since the US began withdrawing troops in May, the Taliban have made increasing territorial gains.
According to the Long War Journal, the Taliban had controlled 73 of Afghanistan’s 407 districts before the start of May. This number rose to 157 in the two months that followed. A strong Taliban presence in an additional 151 districts makes those vulnerable as well and effectively leaves just 79 districts fully in control of the current Afghan government.
For the US, the troop withdrawal may be cast as the end of its ‘forever war,’ but for Afghanis, the future remains fraught with uncertainty. With the exit of Western forces, there is a growing fear that Kabul may fall into the hands of the Taliban.
US officials including President Biden have been reticent in discussing Afghanistan’s future, although the president did suggest that the US retained ‘over-the-horizon capacity’ to carry out airstrikes if the situation deteriorated. “But the Afghanis are going to have to do it themselves with the air force they have,” he added though.
Air support for Afghan forces along with aerial surveillance will come from outside Afghanistan, via bases in Qatar and the UAE, or a US aircraft carrier stationed in the Arabian Sea.
With prospective peace talks hitting a deadlock, there remains a real risk that Afghanistan will plunge deeper into civil war once the withdrawal of foreign troops is complete. Some US intelligence officials have stated that a complete Taliban takeover could not be ruled out within the next six months to two years.
Although the negotiations between the US and the Taliban yielded a reduction in aggression towards US forces, the Taliban continues to target Afghan forces, relentlessly capturing new territory. While President Biden, speaking of the Afghan government, noted “They have the capacity to sustain the government,” what is clear is that the American exit has tilted the power balance in favour of the Taliban.
