April 2021
For 20 years, Bagram Airfield was the nerve heart of the U.S.-led counterterrorism marketing campaign throughout Afghanistan and the primary hub for Particular Operations troops.
August 2021
However as U.S. forces had been withdrawing from Afghanistan in August 2021, the Afghan army that that they had armed and educated collapsed.
The Taliban regained management of the nation and, inside weeks, the community of army bases the US had occupied over 20 years of warfare was misplaced.
In September, President Donald Trump made a shock demand for the regime handy Bagram again. He described the power as “one of many greatest air bases on the earth” and prompt it was “an hour away from the place China makes its nuclear weapons.”
His feedback drew a fast rebuke from the Taliban. Even earlier than Trump’s feedback, the regime had deployed troopers and spies to protect the airfield outdoors Kabul and different former U.S. amenities.
Former U.S. army bases in Afghanistan map
After regaining management in 2021, the Taliban introduced plans to show the previous U.S. bases into hubs for their very own troopers and into particular financial zones. In propaganda footage posted on social media, the Taliban have depicted a flurry of exercise on the bases, together with troop workout routines, plane upkeep and army parades.
However a Washington Publish evaluation of satellite tv for pc photographs, open-source information and interviews with regional officers means that the cash-strapped and remoted regime has managed solely restricted use of most of the bases. Officers now acknowledge they’ve just about no financial use for the bases, however they keep that their army is utilizing the amenities.
The Publish reviewed greater than three dozen satellite tv for pc photographs offered by Planet Labs and Vantor that had been taken between early 2021, when the U.S. nonetheless managed the amenities, and this fall, 4 years into Taliban rule. Whereas they reveal efforts at a number of bases to salvage spare elements for tanks, armored automobiles and plane, the variety of high-value plane and weapons methods seems restricted.
“A number of the gear they inherited doesn’t work,” mentioned Asfandyar Mir, a senior fellow for South Asia on the Stimson Heart assume tank.
A debate over a seemingly empty base
The Taliban authorities’s efforts to defend Bagram from undesirable guests and assaults are seen from area.
Bagram Air Base – August 2021
Bagram Air Base – October 2025
August 2021
Within the jap and southwestern sections of the bottom, delivery containers that after served as places of work, short-term housing and storage items …
October 2025
… have been moved, apparently to wall the bottom off from outdoors view.
It’s much less clear what the Taliban are hiding. Satellite tv for pc photographs point out solely minor army exercise there over the previous 4 years.
The tarmac at Bagram as soon as teemed with U.S. and Afghan warplanes. Of their place now are photographs of plane painted immediately on the pavement, apparently meant as decoys when seen from above. They haven’t moved because the withdrawal, in accordance with William Goodhind, a geospatial analyst on the analysis undertaking Contested Floor, which makes use of satellite tv for pc imagery to trace armed battle.
No army plane noticed within the years following the withdrawal of U.S. forces
Initially, the Taliban regime hoped to make use of Bagram each for army and civilian functions, with plans to determine particular financial zones there.
However in a press release to The Publish, a spokesman for the Taliban-run Ministry of Business and Commerce acknowledged publicly for the primary time that these plans at the moment are off.
“After technical evaluations,” spokesman Akhundzada Abdul Salam Jawad mentioned, “we concluded that changing army amenities into financial facilities would require a collection of main demolitions and reconstructions — a course of that might be each expensive and damaging to our army sector.”
It’s a mirrored image, Mir mentioned, of the Taliban’s broader battle as they attempt to make Afghanistan’s aid-dependent economic system self-sufficient.
“There are sufficient airfields,” he mentioned. What the Taliban authorities actually wants, he mentioned, are trains and railway tracks to move the minerals and uncommon earths it’s hoping to extract for income.
The Taliban’s scavenging for deserted arms
U.S. forces left greater than $7 billion in army gear with the Afghan nationwide military, the U.S. Particular Inspector Common for Afghanistan Reconstruction reported in 2023.
That included greater than a quarter-million rifles — sufficient to arm all the U.S. Marine Corps — and almost 18,000 night-vision goggles, sufficient to outfit the Military’s 82nd Airborne Division.
Many of those rifles and goggles have since appeared in neighboring Pakistan, the place they’re more and more carried by insurgents who’ve pledged allegiance to the Afghan Taliban regime’s chief, a Publish investigation discovered this yr. (Pakistan accuses the Afghan regime of sheltering and supporting the militants; Kabul denies these accusations.)
On the deserted bases, the Afghan Taliban additionally discovered planes, helicopters and armored automobiles that had been utilized by the Afghan nationwide military.
Satellite tv for pc photographs counsel “a concerted effort by the Taliban to centralize, assess and salvage its newfound fleet” within the years since, Goodhind mentioned.
In Kandahar, residence to a serious air base vacated by the U.S. in Could 2021 and overrun by the Taliban, photographs present a whole lot of automobiles grouped collectively in a number of compounds. Humvees that had in all probability been handed over to the U.S.-backed Afghan military had been “gutted and their chassis piled in open floor,” Goodhind mentioned.
Kandahar airfield detailed compounds
On the Kabul airport, photographs present the Taliban regime shifting saved or scrapped plane to the aprons since 2021 — what Goodhind mentioned was in all probability a part of the same effort to “consolidate all captured gear and to cannibalize elements wanted for repairs.”
Among the many army plane that might be seen on the Kabul airport in August had been a number of A-29 Tremendous Tucano gentle assault plane and UH-60 Black Hawk twin-engine utility helicopters, in accordance with Goodhind and Sean O’Connor, lead satellite tv for pc imagery analyst at Janes, a protection intelligence agency.
There additionally gave the impression to be a number of transport plane, together with C-130 Hercules and Cessna 208 planes, and several other Mi-17 Hip helicopters, the analysts mentioned.
Army plane current at Kabul airport
Officers and analysts in Pakistan are involved in regards to the reactivation of aerial property by the Taliban regime.
Whereas the Taliban authorities lacks expert pilots and technicians, it’s discovering new methods to restore some plane by sourcing spare elements on the black market, a senior Pakistani official mentioned. He spoke on the situation of anonymity as a result of he was not licensed to talk publicly.
Pakistani and Afghan forces clashed final month amid tensions over Islamabad’s accusations that the Afghan Taliban are sheltering Tehrik-e-Taliban, the militants who’re waging a rising insurgency in Pakistan’s northwest.
The Taliban’s helicopters and close-support plane could be “helpful when dealing with a minimally armed insurgency or aggressor,” O’Connor mentioned, however not a nuclear-armed nation with one of many world’s largest militaries corresponding to Pakistan.
However Syed Muhammad Ali, a Pakistani protection analyst, cautioned that the aerial property nonetheless might assist the Taliban “to shortly shift forces and gear, and enhance the pace of their mobilization” if wanted in an escalating battle with Pakistan.
The Taliban’s Protection Ministry didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Underneath the Biden administration, U.S. protection officers rejected duty for the deserted gear. The Pentagon mentioned final yr that it had offered weapons and gear to the Afghan military after “cautious end-user concerns together with dangers of enemy seize.” Officers mentioned they had no intention of recovering the arms.
Trump believes in any other case. “I feel we should always get numerous that gear again,” he mentioned in February.
A lingering Kabul-Kandahar divide
Whereas Kabul stays the Afghan capital, Taliban Supreme Chief Haibatullah Akhundzada and different ideological leaders of the Taliban are primarily based within the southern metropolis of Kandahar.
However because the Taliban have moved necessary authorities places of work to the south, a few of their most useful army property don’t seem to have adopted. In latest satellite tv for pc photographs, Goodhind mentioned, “Kandahar appeared virtually empty of plane.”
The sudden drop in exercise in Kandahar is seen from area even at night time. Compounds that was once illuminated around-the-clock now lie in darkness.
Evolution of nighttime lights within the army base of Kandahar
Kabul, against this, has remained “a hive of aviation exercise,” Goodhind mentioned.
Within the jap part of the Kabul airport, the Taliban constructed 10 sentry towers in 2023 and 2024, considerably boosting safety across the space that was focused by an Islamic State suicide bomber throughout the U.S. withdrawal in August 2021. The assault killed 13 U.S. troops and an estimated 170 Afghans.
Location of recent sentry towers at Kabul airport
Islamabad views the Taliban’s concentrate on the Kabul airport as an indication of weak spot, the senior Pakistani safety official mentioned.
“They preserve most plane in Kabul,” he mentioned, “as a result of they don’t have sufficient folks or gear to run many airports.”
Others imagine it’s a mirrored image of the Taliban regime’s inside energy dynamics, with completely different factions controlling completely different elements of the safety equipment.
The Kandahar-based hard-liners who lead the regime seem comfortably in management in conservative southern Afghanistan and will not have to pool their sources there, Mir mentioned. However they and their supporters are broadly believed to be competing for energy with the Haqqanis, a family-run faction of the Taliban that’s significantly energetic within the capital and east of the nation.
“Controlling Kabul is essential,” Mir mentioned. A retreat from there “would depart the sphere open.”
About this story
Shaiq Hussain and Haq Nawaz Khan contributed to this report. Enhancing by Matthew Hay Brown, Adrián Blanco Ramos, Natalia Jimenez and Joe Moore.
