Time to NUKE the place
Fortress USA now a jihadi HQ
ANTHONY LOYD
A TALIBAN commander sat in the control tower of what was once the nerve centre of America’s war in Afghanistan, momentarily king of all he surveyed.
Maulawi Hafiz Mohibullah Muktaz, a religious leader and fighter from Kandahar aged 35, leant back in his seat laughing, twiddled some dials on a control console, stared out across the multibilliondollar base the size of a small city and picked up a phone to summon an imaginary jet.
“Never in our wildest dreams could we have believed we could beat a superpower like America with just our Kalashnikovs,” he beamed, staring across the two runways beneath him. Close by were 100 revetted holding bays for attack jets, the air base passenger lounge, a fifty-bed hospital and in the middle distance hangars, accommodation blocks, abandoned American armoured vehicles and the prison area that was the scene of some of the darkest episodes of the US-led occupation.
“When you do jihad all doors open,” he added. “Our lesson is that we defeated America with our faith and our guns and we hope now that Bagram can be a base for jihad for all Muslims.”
No other US base in Afghanistan epitomises the rise and crashing fall of this 20-year mission than Bagram. Once the coalition’s principal transport and logistics hub, as well as the primary air base for attack missions by coalition aircraft, it was abandoned overnight on July 1, the departing American troops merely turning off electrical and water supplies before fleeing without telling Afghan allies of their plans to do so. It was a moment that increased the growing sense of betrayal that Afghans felt.
Later, President Biden, whose chaotic evacuation operation from Kabul international airport concluded on Tuesday, was heavily criticised for having left Bagram, which had both the capability and security to better undertake the evacuation. For the Taliban now picking through the vastness of the abandoned US base, however, Bagram is a tangible peak of triumph.
“For any foreign power considering attacking Afghanistan then look at Bagram now and learn your lesson well before embarking on foolish endeavour,” Muktaz said.
He drove out into the base to take a tour. “I’ve been here 10 days and it is so huge I still can’t orientate myself,” he murmured, driving past a dozen armoured vehicles in his Toyota pick-up.
He paused briefly on the runway to examine an abandoned helicopter as, near by, a Taliban fighter rolled a bulletperforated medicine ball left by the Americans, trilling “basketball” as he threw it to a comrade who was felled as he caught the 15kg weight.
The base, 90 minutes north of Kabul, once a bastion of resistance to the Taliban before the 2001 US invasion, was finally abandoned by Afghan security forces on August 15 as units of the Islamists swept into the capital. The Taliban freed hundreds of prisoners held in the infamous detention facility here, including scores of ISIS-K prisoners.
An earlier detention facility at Bagram was notorious for the abuse of prisoners by their captors: at least two were beaten to death in December 2002. A new facility was built in 2009 that later became the main jail for Afghans arrested by US forces during the war. At its peak in 2011 more than 3000 detainees, including Taliban fighters and terrorists, were held here; more than 18 times the prisoner population of Guantanamo Bay.
Muktaz led the way into the dim-lit bowels of the vast American facility, a dystopian gloom of cages, interrogation rooms and surveillance screens that was littered with restraints, handcuffs and riot control gear. Here was the dark underbelly of America’s war.
A huge central corridor formed the spine of the prison. Off one side of it were warehouse-sized cage systems, with grilled roofs once patrolled by guards, spot-lit to deprive prisoners of sleep when required.
Helmandi commander, Maulawi Ahmed Shah, 44, appeared behind us. He had been held in Bagram twice: once in 2002 in the original prison and once again after 2009 in the newer facility.
“The first time I was tortured repeatedly by the Americans,” he said. “I was stripped and hosed with cold water naked; suspended in chains and beaten.”
Stepping among the sections of one cage complex, each of which had between 24 and 30 mattresses inside, he briefly examined the pictures on the walls drawn by prisoners. “It was hard to imagine when I was held here — with American guards walking on the grills above our heads staring down at us, turning bright spotlights upon us whenever they wished, looked at us all the time, interrogated and humiliated — that this day would ever come,” he said.
The London Times