Bagram, borders and broken promises
Bagram, borders and broken promises
Even as regional and wider political changes take place, in many ways Afghanistan is witnessing a troubling rerun of history. Tanya Vatsa assesses the situation.
Since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, Kabul’s strategic environment has shifted dramatically. Yet in many ways the patterns of rivalry, foreign intrusion and internal regression are repeating themselves. The Afghan narrative asks a valid question: is the liberal world’s confidence in a linear progression of history misplaced?
The recent border clashes between Afghanistan and Pakistan were only the visible surface of a far deeper structural malaise. Islamabad has long attempted to manage its internal security by leveraging the US presence across the border in Afghanistan. For years, the American war effort inadvertently served as a containment buffer for cross-border militancy. But since the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in 2021, that containment has collapsed. Pakistan has witnessed a sharp resurgence of militancy from a range of actors – Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), and ethno-separatist groups such as the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA). Each exploits the vacuum left by the withdrawal of foreign forces and the shifting loyalties among armed factions.
Islamabad has repeatedly demanded that the Taliban administration rein in the TTP and prevent cross-border attacks. Meanwhile, after being pushed out of Afghan territory, ISKP has found new opportunities to make inroads into Pakistan’s frontier regions. The Pakistani security establishment, preoccupied with countering these incursions, has seen its attention and resources stretched thin – a vacuum that the BLA has capitalised on to advance its separatist agenda in Balochistan.
For Kabul, the equation is equally fraught. The Taliban shares a historical and ideological kinship with the TTP, forged during their joint struggle against the US-backed Afghan administration. While the Taliban leadership has officially prohibited combat operations beyond Afghanistan’s borders, the enduring battlefield camaraderie and shared ideological currents have prompted several factions within the Taliban to continue cooperating with the TTP.
Simultaneously, the Taliban remains locked in a violent confrontation with ISKP,an adversary that challenges its legitimacy and security from within. It therefore cannot afford internal fissures or dissent that might arise from enforcing strict discipline against ties with the TTP. Its reluctance to clamp down decisively has frustrated Pakistan. The fragile ceasefire and ongoing peace talks between Pakistan and Afghanistan remain precarious unless the underlying issues of cross-border militancy and ideological loyalties are internally addressed.
The US war effort inadvertently served as a containment buffer for cross-border militancy
Pakistan’s recent expulsion and targeting of Afghan refugees further reflect its frustration with Kabul’s inaction against the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), straining relations beyond repair. This rising volatility in Pakistan’s western frontier inevitably shapes the regional power calculus – a calculus that also informs Washington’s renewed interest in the Bagram airbase, where America’s strategic ambitions intersect with Afghanistan’s internal fragility.
In September 2025, US President Donald Trump issued a thinly veiled warning to the Taliban, declaring that ‘bad things are going to happen’ if America’s interests in Afghanistan were undermined. His statement accompanied renewed talk in Washington about reclaiming the Bagram Airbase, a move that has reignited debate over Afghanistan’s strategic value in the evolving global order.
Located about 50 km north of Kabul, Bagram was the US’s largest military base during the 20-year war and remains a logistical gem. Its position at the crossroads of South, Central and West Asia makes it uniquely valuable – Afghanistan borders China, Iran, Pakistan and India, four states that together shape much of the world’s political and economic future. The base’s proximity to vast reserves of rare earth minerals, oil and natural gas only sharpens its strategic appeal. Originally built by the Soviets, Bagram also carries historical weight – a Cold War relic now re-emerging as a prize in a new multipolar contest.
For the Taliban Bagram is a symbol of defiance and sovereignty
For Washington, access to Bagram would strengthen its posture across Asia, placing it within 2,400 km of China’s missile manufacturing hub in Xinjiang. In an era of renewed greatpower rivalry, the base offers an unmatched vantage point, not just over Afghanistan but over the entire Asian heartland.
For the Taliban, however, Bagram is more than a military installation; it is a symbol of defiance and sovereignty. The very premise of the Taliban’s two-decade war was the rejection of foreign occupation. To allow an American return, however transactional, would strike at the ideological core of its movement and risk disaffection within its ranks. At a moment when the group struggles to consolidate legitimacy at home and abroad, internal cohesion is paramount – and ideological compromise could prove fatal.
Regionally, any US re-entry would unsettle the delicate balance. Iran would see it as encirclement, China as containment, and India as a cue to rethink its cautious engagement. The clash between American ambition and Afghan insistence on autonomy thus reveals a broader shift: the ‘war on terror’ has given way to a new era of strategic positioning, where access, not ideology, defines power.
Against this backdrop of border tiffs, strategic jockeying and foreign influence, one of the most striking, and tragic, features remains the domestic retreat in rights and norms, most prominently women’s rights. The initial optimism of 2021 – that with the Taliban in power the world would demand progress – has given way to disillusionment.
In 1992 the political scientist Francis Fukuyama posited the ‘end of history’ – the idea that liberal democracy represented the final form of human government. But Afghanistan today is a reminder that the arc is not necessarily bending inexorably towards liberal rights. The ‘backsliding of rights’ stands witness to advances undone and progress reversed. The retreat in girls’ education, female labour participation and the virtual erasure of women from involvement in public and political life under the Taliban prove that rights are not linear.
For the liberal world – donor states, multilateral institutions, civil society – this means a recalibration. It is not sufficient to treat Afghanistan as a theatre of counter-terrorism, sweeping aside questions of gender and rights. Instead, the global community must press the regime in Kabul on gender rights as a central, not peripheral, issue. Engagement cannot ignore the internal dynamics of Afghan society: women’s rights must be crucial to legitimacy. At the same time, the double standards of foreign policy must be addressed: talk of rightswithout credible action ultimately risks complicit silence.
Tanya Vatsa is currently a Global Intelligence Analyst, and a former Editor at the Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs, US Dept of Defense. She completed her Master’s in Legal Studies at the University of Edinburgh after obtaining a law degree from Lucknow’s National Law University, India