United States President Donald Trump has demanded that Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban hand the country’s Bagram airbase over to Washington, five years after he signed a deal with the group that paved the way for the US withdrawal from Kabul.
At a news conference with United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer on September 18, Trump told reporters that the US government was “trying to get [Bagram] back”.
“We gave it to [the Taliban] for nothing. We want that base back,” he said.
Two days later, on September 20, he followed up that demand with a pointed threat on his Truth Social platform: “If Afghanistan doesn’t give Bagram Airbase back to those that built it, the United States of America, BAD THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN!!!”
The Taliban has rejected Trump’s demand.
This is not the first time, however, that Trump has shown his interest in retaking the former US military base. In a February 2025 media briefing, now deleted from the White House’s website, Trump was quoted as saying, “We were going to keep Bagram. We were going to keep a small force on Bagram.”
So what is the Bagram base, why does Trump want it so badly, what is its strategic significance, and can the US get it back?
What is the Bagram airbase?
Four years after US forces evacuated their military bases in Afghanistan, Bagram remains a contentious piece of real estate that the Trump administration wants to retake from the Taliban.
The base, which has two concrete runways – one 3.6km long (2.2 miles), the other 3km (1.9 miles) – lies about 50km (31 miles) outside Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul. It has been a strategic stronghold for the many military powers that have controlled Afghanistan – and fought over it – over the past half-century.
The airfield was first developed by the Soviet Union in the 1950s, an early shot fired at the dawn of the Cold War that would drag Afghanistan into its vortex for decades. But the Afghan government of the time controlled the base.
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