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President Donald Trump made the shocking announcement this month that the U.S. is “trying” to take back Bagram Airfield from the Taliban in Afghanistan after abandoning it more than four years ago.
There’s just one problem with Trump’s latest ambition — China will see to it that Washington does not accomplish this goal, warned Bill Roggio, expert analyst and senior editor of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ “Long War Journal.”
“First of all, the Taliban will never accept the return to the US. I’d sooner…believe the Taliban would give up on its Sharia or Islamic law before I’d believe that it would let the U.S. return,” Roggio told Fox News Digital.
“But let’s say the Trump administration could convince the Taliban to consider allowing the U.S. to return to Bagram,” he continued. “The Chinese would come down hard.”
TRUMP: US TRYING TO GET BAGRAM AIRBASE ‘BACK’ FROM TALIBAN IN AFGHANISTAN
UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters fly during a military parade to mark the third anniversary of the withdrawal of U.S.-led troops from Afghanistan, in Bagram Air Base in the Parwan Province of Afghanistan, Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Siddiqullah Alizai)
Roggio explained that China and Russia have a vested interest in the U.S. staying out of the region.
The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan opened the mineral-rich nation to China and has enabled Beijing to expand its Belt and Road Initiative into a country — though run by a terrorist organization — that it was previously unable to tap.
China — the first country to appoint an ambassador to the Taliban-run nation in 2023 — sent its foreign minister, Wang Yi, in August to Kabul to hold talks with Afghanistan’s acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi.
According to the Taliban, China expressed an interest not only in Afghanistan’s mining opportunities, where minerals like lithium, copper, iron, gold and uranium are abundant, but Beijing also said it was open to expand trade with Kabul.
Visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi holds talks with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, acting deputy prime minister of the Afghan Taliban’s caretaker government, in Kabul, Afghanistan, March 24, 2022. (Saifurahman Safi/Xinhua via Getty Images)
While access to these minerals could greatly benefit China, the impact that trade and mining agreements with Beijing could have on Afghanistan’s dire economy may prove crucial for Kabul.
“The Chinese just wield significant influence with the Taliban, particularly when it comes to something like the U.S. return,” Roggio said. “They would pressure the Taliban by possibly canceling those mining rights, by restricting trade, by ending political and diplomatic recognition. These are all things that are important to the Taliban as they try to develop as a government and try to become legitimately recognized.”
US FAILURE IN TALIBAN INTEL HAS OPENED AFGHANISTAN UP TO CHINA, RUSSIA
“The Taliban don’t care if the U.S. recognizes them as much as the Taliban would care if the Chinese would recognize them, if the Russians would recognize them,” he added.
Trump claimed that the deal he formed with the Taliban in 2020 in Doha, Qatar — which outlined the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan by May 2021 — did not include the Bagram Air Base.
“We were going to keep it,” Trump told reporters from the U.K. last week.
But the original deal did not include a stipulation allowing the U.S. to maintain forces at the base about 30 miles north of Kabul.
An infographic titled “Trump’s Bagram plan revives great power rivalry over Afghanistan” created in Ankara, Turkiye on Sept. 23, 2025. (Murat Usubali/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Trump also said a major reason he wants to get the base back is because it’s “an hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons.” But when asked which facility he was referring to, neither the White House nor the Pentagon would confirm, and Fox News Digital could not locate a Chinese nuclear facility through open-source intelligence that close to Afghanistan’s border.
Regardless of whether there is a Chinese nuclear facility near the former American base in Afghanistan, Roggio warned that the economic ties Beijing and Kabul are establishing is “dangerous.”
“The growing Taliban-Chinese relationship is something we should worry about. The Chinese can give the Taliban access to technology — military technology,” he said. “They could give them the resources that they need.”
Roggio pointed out that a mining deal could put “billions” into the Taliban’s pockets.
“Why is this important? Because al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups are using Afghanistan as a base of operations,” Roggio said, noting that al-Qaeda is reported to be running training camps in 13 out of the nation’s 34 provinces.
A Taliban fighter stands guard as women wait to receive food rations distributed by a humanitarian aid group in Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, May 23, 2023. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi, File)
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Roggio also said that the Taliban permits al-Qaeda to run religious schools, safe houses for leaders in the terrorist network and their families who transit between Afghanistan and Iran, as well as a weapons shortage depot.
“Afghanistan looks actually far worse today than it looked on Sept. 10, 2001, the day before the 9/11 attacks,” Roggio said.