Trump’s hope to “resume” Bagram air base rejected by the Taliban manager

A Taliban official rejected the idea that the United States could resume a key air base in Afghanistan after President Donald Trump told journalists to want.

Zakir Jalal, who works in the Taliban Foreign Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the idea that the United States maintained any military presence in Afghanistan was “completely” rejected during the two parties before the Taliban returned to power.

This came after the US President has made sure that the Badgram air base base – the epicenter of NATO forces in Afghanistan for two decades – could be possible “because they need things on our part”.

The base was given to the Afghan army shortly before the Taliban took control of Afghanistan.

Trump said at a press conference in the United Kingdom on Thursday that the United States “gave them for nothing.”

The complete withdrawal of American troops was part of an agreement signed during the first Trump administration in 2020, and finished with Joe Biden in 2021.

But Trump said in March that he had planned to keep Bagram Airbase “not because of Afghanistan but because of China.”

Trump reiterated the importance of his location on Thursday, saying that a reason to bring Bagram was because “it is an hour from where China is nuclear.”

We do not know exactly what he refers to: a BBC Verify survey in July noted that there was a nuclear test site at around 2,000 km (1,243 miles), in northwestern China.

Trump also said on several occasions that China had since established a presence at the base, north of the capital, Kabul. The Taliban denied the complaint.

But a BBC survey – which examined 30 satellite images from the end of 2020 to 2025 – found very little activity at the base since the Taliban’s return, and no evidence in support of the presence of China at the base.

On Friday, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that “China respects the territorial integrity of Afghanistan and sovereignty”, adding that “the future of Afghanistan should be in the hands of the Afghan people”.

The Taliban zakir jalal, on the other hand, wrote on the social media platform X: “Throughout history, the Afghans did not accept military presence, and this possibility was completely rejected during the talks and the Doha agreement, but the doors are open to another commitment.”

The United States and the Taliban was recently involved in talks, although on Saturday meeting with the Taliban Foreign Minister of Foreign Affairs has focused on Americans organized in Afghanistan, reported the reuters news agency.