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An employee of the Taliban has rejected the idea that the United States can return a key air base in Afghanistan after President Donald Trump told reporters that he wanted it back.
Zakir Jalal, who works at the Taliban Foreign Ministry, said the US idea of maintaining any military presence in Afghanistan was “completely” rejected during negotiations between the two countries before the Taliban returned to power.
He came after the US President hinted at the return of Bagram, the NATO Epicenter in Afghanistan for two decades – may be “because they need things for us.”
The base was handed over to the Afghan military shortly before the Taliban took control of Afghanistan.
Trump said at a press conference in the UK on Thursday, USA “gave it to them for nothing.”
The full withdrawal of US troops was part of a deal signed during the first Trump administration in 2020, and completed under Joe Biden in 2021.
But Trump said in March that he planned to keep Bagram’s air base “not because of Afghanistan, but for China.”
Trump reiterated the importance of his location on Thursday, saying that one of the reasons for Bagram to return is because “this is an hour’s trip from where China makes its nuclear weapons.”
It is unclear what he meant: the BBC is checking the investigation in July that there is a place for nuclear testing about 2,000 km (1.243 miles), in northwestern China.
Trump has also repeatedly said that China has since established a presence in the base north of the capital, Kabul. The Taliban denied the claim.
But an investigation into the BBC – which examines 30 satellite images from the end of 2020 to 2025 – found very little activity at the base after the Taliban returned and there was no evidence to support China’s presence at the base.
On Friday, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said “China respects Afghanistan’s territorial integrity and sovereignty”, adding that “the future of Afghanistan should be in the hands of the Afghan people.”
Meanwhile, Taliban Zakir Jalal wrote on the social media platform X: “Throughout the history, the Afghans did not accept a military presence and this opportunity was completely rejected during the conversations and the agreement in Doha, but the doors are open to other commitments.”
The US and the Taliban have recently participated in the negotiations, although on Saturday a meeting with Foreign Minister of Taliban focuses on Americans held in Afghanistan, according to the News Agency Reuters.
