within the dead of night without notifying the Afghans, the base’s new commander said. General Asadullah Kohistani told the BBC that the US left Bagram at 03:00 civil time on Friday, which the Afghan military discovered hours later. Bagram also contains a jail, and there are reportedly up to five,000 Taliban prisoners left within the facility. The Taliban are advancing rapidly in Afghanistan as US troops withdraw. General Kohistani said on Monday that Afghan forces were expecting the Taliban to attack Bagram. Speaking to reporters at the airbase, he said he was already receiving reports the group was making “movements in rural areas” nearby. “You know, if we compare ourselves with the Americans, it is a big difference,” Gen Kohistani said. “But per our capabilities… we try to try to to the simplest and the maximum amount as possible secure and serve all the people.” The US announced on Friday that it had vacated Bagram, effectively completing its campaign in Afghanistan earlier than the official end date of 11 September, announced by President Joe Biden earlier this year. The withdrawal of people troops from Afghanistan is quite 90% completed, the Pentagon’s Central Command said on Tuesday. The Americans left behind about 3.5 million items, Gen Kohistani said, including tens of thousands of bottles of water, energy drinks, and military ready-made meals called MREs. They also left behind thousands of civilian vehicles, without keys, and many armored vehicles, the Associated Press reported. They took heavy weapons with them and detonated some ammunition stocks, but left behind small weapons and ammunition for the Afghans, Gen Kohistani said. Asked by the Associated Press about the late-night withdrawal from the bottom, US military spokesman Colonel Sonny Leggett said a press release issued last week that said US forces had coordinated their departure from various bases with Afghan leaders. Meanwhile, Germany has closed its consulate general within the city of Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan, a diplomat said. The last German troops left the country last week. Within 20 minutes of the US’s departure on Friday night the electricity was pack up and therefore the base was plunged into darkness, the AP reported – a sign to looters who smashed through barriers and ransacked the abandoned buildings. Leftover items from the bottom have ended up in nearby scrap yards and used shops. At its height, the Bagram base was home to tens of thousands of troops. It ballooned from a basic Afghan base of operations to a mini-city with swimming pools, cinemas, spas, and imported sustenance outlets Burger King and Pizza Hut. The airfield was built by the land within the 1950s, becoming its main base within the 1980s because it defended its occupation of Afghanistan. It was later occupied by the Moscow-backed Afghan government and so a mujahideen administration, before eventually polishing off in Taliban hands when the group swept to power within the mid-1990s. When the US invaded in 2001, it deposed the Taliban and took control of the airbase, transforming it into a sprawling complex from which it fought its war against the group. The late-night withdrawal by the US hands control of the bottom to a far less well-equipped force that would struggle to defend it from the Taliban, which has made swift advances in recent weeks across the country, seizing rural districts and surrounding some larger cities. The group claims to possess taken quite 10 new districts within the past 24 hours. Despite the movements on the bottom, stalled peace talks were renewed last week between representatives of the Taliban and the Afghan government in Doha, the capital of Qatar. Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, told the BBC that they’d present an idea to the team negotiating on behalf of the Afghan government and either side would discuss it. Gen Kohistani has roughly 3,000 troops under his command – significantly but the tens of thousands of folks and allied soldiers that when occupied Bagram airbase. About 1,000 Afghan soldiers fighting the Taliban within the north of the country fled over the border into Tajikistan on Monday, in keeping with officials, raising fears over the military’s ability to debar further advances by the group.
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