The US is pressing ahead with its withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Now they have left their largest base, Bagram Air Force Base.
This closure is symbolic.
Kabul - After almost 20 years, the US and other NATO soldiers have left their largest base in Afghanistan.
All coalition troops are out of the Bagram Air Force Base, said a senior US military official.
US media reports said the base had been handed over to the Afghan security forces.
The Afghan Ministry of Defense did not initially comment on this.
This means that the withdrawal of international troops, which began at the beginning of May, is about to be completed. The USA had officially announced that it would withdraw all troops by September 11th at the latest. However, there have been reports for some time that the withdrawal could be completed around July 4th, the US national day. The Bundeswehr flew its last remaining soldiers from the north of the country on Tuesday.
There is no official information on where US or other NATO troops are now.
International soldiers should still be at Kabul airport, at the headquarters of the NATO mission “Resolute Support” in the center of the city and probably also in the US embassy next to it.
The US military official added that the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Austin Scott Miller, continues to have all the skills and powers to protect the force.
Symbol of the US operation in Afghanistan
The closure of Bagram is symbolic.
Over the years, Bagram had become a symbol of the US operation in Afghanistan for many Afghans.
The airfield was originally built by the Soviet Union in the 1950s.
When the USA invaded Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the base was largely destroyed around an hour's drive north of Kabul.
Over the years it has been massively expanded and employed thousands of Afghans, who sometimes spent an hour or more in queues in security gates every day to get to the base in the morning.
Notorious is a prison operated on Bagram.
There have been repeated allegations of torture and illegal detention.
Again and again, Afghans who worked in Bagram were killed on the way to the base by militant Islamist Taliban.
At the same time, countless western goods came into the country via Bagram, which subsequently ended up at the “Bush Bazaar” in Kabul - from protein shakes to Parmesan.
The bazaar was named after US President George W. Bush, who ordered the invasion of Afghanistan.
Equipment scrapping
Most recently, Bagram hit the Afghan headlines because dozens of trucks loaded with scrap from destroyed vehicles and equipment from US troops left the airfield every day.
Many Afghans were annoyed that the US military scrapped such quantities and did not leave them to the security forces.
The military justified this, among other things, with the fact that the equipment should not fall into enemy hands.
Indeed, vast amounts of US-funded equipment have recently fallen into the hands of the Taliban.
When the international troops began to withdraw, the Islamists launched several offensives in the country.
They have since captured around 90 of the 400 or so districts from the demoralized Afghan security forces - and in the process captured hundreds of assault rifles, armored vehicles and, in some cases, heavy military equipment.
American fighter planes will be absent
In the past, Taliban offensives were stopped primarily with the help of US air strikes and, in some cases, American special forces.
The withdrawal means that government troops will now have to do without such combat support.
The Afghan Air Force can only do a fraction of what American fighter planes have so far offered.
It is also unclear whether the machines can be kept airworthy without foreign contract workers who repair and maintain them, but who are now also removing them.
The air force is key in the fight against the Taliban.
The White House has given assurances to the government in Kabul that it will continue to provide "sustainable" security assistance.
So far, Washington has remained vague about what this means.
In an interview with “Voice of America”, a high-ranking US general had ruled out that the US would support Afghan armed forces with air strikes after it had withdrawn.
That does not mean that the Taliban's military advance in Washington is not causing concern.
On the contrary: In view of the developments, the US secret services are said to have revised their forecasts for Afghanistan, according to the Washington Post.
Accordingly, the Afghan government could fall in six to twelve months.
However, Dawud Moradian from the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies (AISS) think tank in Kabul does not want to agree with such a gloomy outlook.
Western assessments have consistently been wrong in the past, he says.
The momentum is currently with the Taliban.
But if the government in Kabul succeeds in breaking this, the outlook could quickly be completely different.
There are first signs of this - such as the recent local uprisings against the Taliban in the country, the change in military leadership or increasing unity of political leadership. Now the question is whether Kabul can maintain this counter-momentum. dpa