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- US troops left Bagram Airfield, their main base in Afghanistan, last week.
- They left at 3 a.m. without warning, the base’s new commander told the BBC.
- The troops reportedly cut off the power at the base and left thousands of Taliban prisoners.
US troops left their key base in Afghanistan in the dead of night last week without notifying their Afghan allies, the new base commander said.
General Asadullah Kohistani of the Afghan National Security and Defense Forces told the BBC that US forces left Bagram Airfield at 3 a.m. local time last Friday.
They also cut off the power when they left, The Associated Press reported.
“We [heard] a rumor that the Americans had left Bagram… and finally at 7 am, we understood that it was confirmed that they had already left Bagram, ”General Kohistani told the PA.
The BBC said as many as 5,000 Taliban prisoners were still held at Bagram prison. The Department of Defense did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
Bagram was captured during the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and has been continuously occupied by US forces since then.
President Joe Biden announced in April his intention to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021, the 20th anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks.
However, the Pentagon has said it expects U.S. troops to be out of the country by the end of August, well ahead of Biden’s deadline, the PA reported last week.
About 1,000 troops must remain to guard the US embassy in Kabul, CNN reported.
Read more: Interpreters who say they were left for dead in Afghanistan as US and UK troops withdraw after 20 years of war
As the United States leaves Afghanistan for good, the Taliban is said to be gaining ground in the country.
Deborah Lyons, the UN envoy to Afghanistan, said on June 22 that the Taliban had taken control of 50 of the country’s 370 districts since May, Reuters reported.
Kohistani, the Afghan general, told the BBC that he expected the Taliban not to waste time attacking Bagram, as they are carrying out “movements in rural areas” nearby.
After the United States left Bagram and before the arrival of the Afghan National Security and Defense Forces, a group of looters entered the base to retrieve anything of value that the American troops had left behind. .
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