Well, the US and its coalition allies really are pulling out of Afghanistan, and there's no bigger symbol of that long, looooooooong overdue withdrawal than the US military unceremoniously leaving Bagram AFB in Kabul, the center of US operations in the country for the last twenty goddamn years.
American troops and their Western allies have departed the U.S. military base that coordinated the sprawling war in Afghanistan, officials said on Friday, effectively ending major U.S. military operations in the country after nearly two decades.
For generations of American service members, the military hub, Bagram Air Base, was a gateway to and from a war that cut across constant changes on the battlefield and in presidential administrations. But the final withdrawal overnight on Thursday occurred with little fanfare and no public ceremony, and in an atmosphere of grave concern over the Afghan security forces’ ability to hold off Taliban advances across the country.
The American exit was completed quickly enough that some looters managed to get into the base before being arrested, Afghan officials said.
The quiet leave-taking from the base weeks before the planned withdrawal of American troops in mid July, and months ahead of President’s Biden announced Sept. 11 departure, highlights Washington’s efforts to signal two different messages: one to the U.S. public that its longest foreign war is ending, and another to the Afghan government that the United States is not abandoning the country in the middle of a Taliban offensive, and would retain some ability to conduct airstrikes if need be.
“We are on track, exactly where we expected to be,” Mr. Biden told reporters at the White House Friday of the withdrawal.
Bagram was operating at full capacity until the end on Thursday. Fighter jets, cargo planes and surveillance aircraft relied on the twin runways until it was no longer feasible to keep them in the country.
Now, air support for the Afghan forces and overhead surveillance will be flown in from outside the country, from bases in Qatar or the United Arab Emirates, or from an aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea. A contingent of 650 troops will remain to protect the American Embassy in Kabul, the capital. How long that type of support will continue is unclear, but the Pentagon has until Sept. 11 — when the American military mission is supposed to formally conclude — to decide.
The departure comes at a perilous time for Afghanistan.
Some U.S. intelligence estimates predict that the Afghan government could fall to its rivals, the Taliban, in from six months to two years after the Americans complete their withdrawal. The Taliban are inching closer to Kabul after having taken about a quarter of the country’s districts in the past two months.
Hundreds of members of the Afghan security forces have surrendered in recent weeks, while their counterattacks have taken back little territory from the Taliban. And as the Afghan forces fracture, regional militias have appeared with renewed prominence, in an echo of the country’s path toward civil war in the 1990s.
“Civil war is certainly a path that can be visualized,” the top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Austin S. Miller, told reporters on Tuesday.
Early Friday morning, looters entered the base, grabbing gas canisters and some laptops, said Darwaish Raufi, a district administrator for Bagram, adding that some were arrested by the police.
Mr. Raufi said the Americans had failed to coordinate their departure with the Afghan forces, leaving a gap in security at the base. But Col. Sonny Leggett, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, said the transfer of the base had been “closely coordinated.”
I'll be the first to say that there has been no greater single example of bipartisanship in the US than the two decades, trillions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of military and civilian casualties in Afghanistan all lost completely thanks to the efforts of both Republicans and Democrats during my adult lifetime.
Having said that, Trump really wanted credit for getting us out, and fully expected to have taken a second term to take a victory lap. Instead, Biden is the one completing the withdrawal. Remember that.
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