The U.S. military gave up Bagram Air Base during its final weeks in Afghanistan, in part because it lacked the necessary number of troops to maintain it, according to top defense officials.
This comes after Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Gens. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Frank McKenzie, the leader of U.S. Central Command, answered questions about the end of the Afghanistan War from the House and Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday and Wednesday.
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One frequent topic brought up by lawmakers was the military’s decision to abandon Bagram Air Base, with the military leaders noting their hands were tied based on the number of personnel they had. Toward the end of the military’s time in Afghanistan, they had roughly 650 troops to defend the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, while officials said they’d need thousands more to run Bagram adequately.
“Retaining Bagram would have required putting as many as 5,000 U.S. troops in harm’s way just to operate and defend,” Austin said. “Staying at Bagram, even for counterterrorism purposes, meant staying at war in Afghanistan — something that the president made clear that he would not do.”
In his testimony Tuesday, the secretary also noted that keeping the air base would’ve “contributed little to the mission that we’d been assigned, and that was to protect and defend the embassy.” Similarly, Milley explained that Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul was “going to be the center of gravity” for any noncombatant evacuation operation, not Bagram.
With only hundreds of troops remaining in the country, the Taliban, which had already overthrown the U.S.-backed government and military, provided added security for U.S. forces on the perimeter of HKIA. Meanwhile, the United States and coalition forces evacuated tens of thousands of people who would be at risk under their new government.
McKenzie acknowledged the Taliban offered to let the U.S. military secure Kabul during a meeting in Doha on Aug. 15, around the time they overthrew the Afghan government. However, the S.S. “did not have the resources to undertake that mission,” and he said he didn’t consider it “to be a formal offer.”
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The U.S. and the Taliban initially committed to the Doha Agreement in February 2020 that called for a full U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan by the end of April 2021, so long as specific conditions had been met. The Taliban, in the agreement, said they wouldn’t allow any of their members plot to threaten the U.S. or to recruit, train or fundraise. They also said they would renounce al Qaeda.
“While the Taliban did not attack U.S. forces, which was one of the conditions, it failed to fully honor any — any other condition under the Doha Agreement. And perhaps most importantly for U.S. national security, the Taliban has never renounced al Qaeda or broke its affiliation with them. We, the United States, adhered to every condition,” Milley testified Tuesday.
