After Latest Report About Kabul Suicide Bomber, Decision to Give Up Bagram Looks Worse Now Than Ever Before

Leah Barkoukis | October 06, 2021 3:00 PM

The ISIS-K terrorist who carried out a suicide attack at the Kabul airport in August, which killed scores of Afghans and 13 U.S. service members, was released by the Taliban from the Bagram Air Base prison just days before the bombing, according to CNN reporting.

The U.S. handed Bagram over to the Afghan military on July 1, but a little more than a month later, on Aug. 15, they surrendered it to the Taliban, who promptly released thousands of prisoners--the vast majority of whom are terrorists.

The Parwan prison at Bagram, along with the Pul-e-Charkhi prison near Kabul, housed several hundred members of ISIS-K, as well as thousands of other prisoners when the Taliban took control of both facilities hours before taking over the capital with barely a shot fired in mid-August, a regional counter-terrorism source told CNN at the time. The Taliban emptied out both prisons, releasing their own members who had been imprisoned but also members of ISIS-K, which is the terror group's affiliate in Afghanistan.
Eleven days later, on August 26, it was one of those prisoners who carried out the suicide bombing at Abbey Gate, killing the 13 US service members, including 11 Marines, one soldier and one sailor. […]
ISIS-K took credit for the attack and named the suicide bomber as Abdul Rehman Al-Loghri. Two US officials confirmed the identity of the attacker. FirstPost, an English-language news site based in India, was first to report that he had been released from the Bagram prison. (CNN)

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said last week that the decision to leave Bagram was the right call.

"Retaining Bagram would have required putting as many as 5,000 U.S. troops in harm's way, just to operate and defend it. And it would have contributed little to the mission that we had been assigned, and that was to protect and defend our embassy which was some 30 miles away," he said. "Staying at Bagram -- even for counter-terrorism purposes -- meant staying at war in Afghanistan, something that the president made clear that he would not do."