I grew up not far from Bagram Airfield, which is located about 60 kilometers north of my childhood home in Kabul. Yet despite that, and the years I spent reporting on the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, I only fully appreciated Bagram’s historical importance, and the extent to which it had been overlooked in policy and strategy, during a recent visit to Germany.
A statue of Buddha sits behind glass in the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, a priceless gift from the people of Afghanistan to Germany intended to lift the spirits of a war-torn nation after World War I. The relic represents a journey spanning thousands of years.
The statue came from Bagram.
Its hand gestures and symbolic motifs embody Buddhist iconography, while its Hellenistic drapery and naturalistic folds are reminiscent of Greek sculpture. This one artifact embodies the layered history of Afghanistan, and the ebb and flow of power surrounding this fabled citadel on the slopes of the Hindu Kush mountain-range.
Archaeological studies suggest that Bagram began its life as “Alexandria in the Caucasus,” founded by Alexander the Great to command the mountain passes and trade routes of Central Asia all the way to the Far East.
This legacy resurfaced during the Cold War, when Bagram became a central arena of superpower rivalry. While the Soviets set their sights on this historic stronghold in the early 1950s, U.S. engagement remained cautious and limited in scope. Vice President Richard Nixon’s visit in 1953 signaled initial U.S. interest, but policy lacked strategic depth, allowing Soviet influence to intensify. President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1959 visit added symbolic weight, yet Washington’s involvement still fell short of sustaining a strategic foothold.
In the 1960s, the Soviets transformed Bagram into a sprawling hub for projecting influence across northern Afghanistan. They extended the runway and constructed barracks, roads, and a major military plane maintenance facility. As part of its campaign, Soviet Russia also trained thousands of Afghan military pilots, technicians, and engineers who worked at the factory and maintained the aircraft.
Bagram became the largest and most fortified military installation in Afghanistan. Yet it also served as a center for cultural exchange, featuring a school that taught Russian, a theater where Soviet and Afghan artists performed, and other amenities. This setup was part of a Soviet campaign to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people, which later became the nerve center of Moscow’s 1979 invasion.
During the invasion, most Soviet bomber jets and cargo carriers operated from Bagram due to its central location. Tactical aircraft like the Su-17 and MiG-27 carried out close air support, and transports like the Ilyushin Il-76 and Antonov moved equipment and personnel across the region. A flight from Bagram to Astrakhan, one of the closest Russian settlements west of the Caspian, took roughly three hours, about the same time it takes to fly from Washington, D.C., to Miami. Depending on the aircraft, it took about the same amount of time to fly from Bagram to Makhachkala on the Caspian coast of southern Russia.
After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the collapse of the Soviet-backed government in 1992, Bagram fell into disrepair as Mujahedeen fighters, local thieves, and militias looted the base. Yet it rose from the ashes to once again become a hub during the U.S. and NATO-led invasion of Afghanistan.
Between 2001 and 2021, the United States reportedly invested millions in its expansion, transforming the old Soviet-built compound into a massive, city-sized complex that featured multiple runways, over 120 acres of aircraft parking, hangars, housing, a hospital, and even fast-food outlets for thousands of personnel.
At its peak, the base hosted, at one time, more than 40,000 troops and contractors, serving as the central logistics hub for U.S. and allied operations across Afghanistan and providing a commanding position for air support and surveillance.
Through the years, local residents knew Bagram for its prison holding senior Taliban and al-Qaida figures, often called “Obama’s Gitmo.” During the Taliban’s two-decade fight against the U.S. and NATO, the release of thousands of prisoners was a central demand, culminating in the Doha Agreement and the eventual U.S. withdrawal in 2021.
The airbase was abandoned in a hasty manner, evident in the items left behind. Local reporters wandered the deserted base, finding scattered uniforms, utensils, and scribbled messages, silent witnesses to a once-mighty force.
“The prison was broken as soon as the Taliban took the airbase,” a former prisoner told a local YouTuber. To many, it was really the United States’ reputation as the world’s most powerful military and political machine that had been shattered.
In September of this year, Bagram was back in the headlines, as U.S. President Donald Trump expressed renewed interest in the base. “We gave it to [the Taliban] for nothing. We want that base back,” he said.
Trump later followed up with a threat posted to his social media account: “If Afghanistan doesn’t give Bagram Airbase back to those that built it, the United States of America, BAD THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN!!!”
Trump’s interest in Bagram is was not merely a contemporary military move or even a bid to restore U.S. pride. Instead, it continues a strategic pattern that has shaped Asia for centuries, with Bagram at the center of regional authority, a stage on which successive rulers, from the Soviets to the Americans, tested their power.
The historical pattern of external powers leveraging Bagram continues today, albeit in altered forms. Moscow, for example, now seeks influence in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan not through occupation but through alignment, reflecting a nuanced awareness of Afghanistan’s ethnic structure and power dynamics. Russia favors diplomacy and soft power, directly engaging the predominantly Pashtun Taliban rather than its traditional Tajik allies.
The Soviets primarily backed non-Pashtun pro-communist factions. As a result, five out of the seven main Mujahedeen groups supported by the U.S. were Pashtun, a reflection of deep-rooted resistance to among the ethnic group. Even during the Taliban’s first rule in Afghanistan, Moscow, despite its fragile political and crippled economic state, supported the Tajik Northern Alliance.
But despite its historically well-documented mistrust of the Pashtuns, today, Russia recognizes the Taliban as indispensable actors and has granted them formal diplomatic recognition.
The Taliban’s consolidation of control, alongside the dispersal of the Northern Resistance Front, is why Moscow now treats the Taliban as the primary power broker in Afghanistan. The Taliban have proven their ability to maintain relative stability across Afghanistan despite the persistent threat posed by the Islamic State’s local affiliate, the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP). This is a degree of control that the former Islamic Republic, despite receiving billions in U.S. assistance, failed to achieve.
By taking this strategic turn, Moscow seeks to stabilize its southern frontier, limit U.S. influence, and reassert its lost authority, despite lingering mistrust, as much of the Taliban’s senior Pashtun leadership, including the Haqqanis, once fiercely fought against the Soviet occupation.
Beyond Afghanistan itself, Russia’s outreach to the Taliban reflects a broader recalibration of its Eurasian strategy. By aligning with the Taliban, Moscow seeks to balance China’s growing economic footprint in Central Asia, prevent the spread of instability into its own Muslim-majority regions, and reassert itself as a regional power broker after its isolation from the West over Ukraine.
For Russia, Afghanistan offers a potential bridge between Central Asia, Iran, and Pakistan, routes critical to emerging energy corridors and trade networks that could bypass Western-controlled supply chains. Therefore, cultivating relations with Kabul under Taliban control is less about ideology than about strategic insulation, countering Western influence, competing subtly with Beijing, and maintaining relevance in the shifting architecture of post-U.S. Eurasia.
As for the Taliban, they are navigating a difficult and constrained positions. The Taliban face a legitimacy crisis, economic collapse, and a growing threat from ISKP. Despite a bitter history as a former occupier and its reputation for unreliability, Russia’s outreach offers Afghanistan’s current rulers a rare diplomatic lifeline: an opportunity to ease isolation, gain a measure of legitimacy, and attract investment without signaling a compromise of independence.
For the United States, this convergence of challenges presents a critical window to reassert influence in Afghanistan. U.S. policy could leverage these vulnerabilities through sustained dialogue, targeted diplomacy (especially with the dominant Pashtuns), and strategic economic engagement rather than unilateral military deployment.
This does not mean extending unconditional recognition to the Taliban government, given their poor record on women’s rights. However, strategic patience and a nuanced understanding of historical patterns and ethnic dynamics are key for any U.S. policy. A military return to Bagram without prior diplomatic groundwork risks undermining the Taliban’s narrative of victory, eroding trust, and potentially driving rank-and-file fighters toward ISKP, a mutual risk to the United States and Afghanistan.
Growing up near Bagram and reporting on the war, I saw its local impact but only later grasped its full historical and strategic significance. For the United States, as the world’s leading military and political power, there is no room for such a gap in understanding.
U.S. policy toward Bagram (and Afghanistan as a whole) must involve calibrated diplomacy, targeted economic engagement, and multilateral partnerships to shape outcomes. This approach would address the challenge posed by ISKP, strengthen governance, and reinforce the United States’ strategic presence in a region historically marked by cycles of occupation and external competition.
Looking at its rich cultural history reminds us that Bagram is more than a military installation. The base can be a critical platform from which the United States can exert influence, guide Afghanistan toward sustainable stability, and prevent a repeat of the mistakes of the past.
