Tillerson in Afghanistan
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (left) speaks with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani before their meeting Monday at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan.
BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made a secret two-hour visit to the main U.S. air base in Afghanistan on Monday, arriving in a military transport plane to meet top Afghan officials inside a bunker.
Nearly 20,000 military personnel, contractors and others live and work at the base, Bagram Airfield north of Kabul. Many were on high alert as Tillerson arrived, fearing the kind of rocket or mortar attack that has become common.
President Barack Obama paid a secret visit to the air base in May 2014. Afghanistan’s president at the time, Hamid Karzai, declined an invitation from U.S. officials to meet Obama at the base, saying that doing so would be a breach of protocol, although the two leaders spoke by telephone.
Tillerson’s visit was his first to Afghanistan as secretary of state, and like nearly every other top U.S. official to visit over the previous two decades, he said the country’s predicament was not nearly as dire as his own security precautions suggested.
“But I think if you consider the current situation in Afghanistan, and we were talking about this a few minutes ago, and you look a few years in the past to what the circumstances were, Afghanistan has come quite a distance already in terms of creating a much more vibrant population, a much more vibrant government, education system, a larger economy,” he said in a small windowless conference room during an eight-minute news conference. “So there are opportunities to strengthen the foundations of a prosperous Afghanistan society.”
When the maw of the C-17 aircraft that he flew into Bagram opened, he was greeted by Gen. John Nicholson, the commander of U.S. operations in Afghanistan, along with a sizable contingent of soldiers and security guards.
They piled into a motorcade and drove the few minutes to the base’s bunkerlike headquarters, passing hangars constructed by Russia. Concrete blast walls lined much of the route. Helicopters patrolled the perimeter, and two security blimps equipped with long-range cameras hovered.
At the headquarters building, a former prison, Tillerson and Nicholson met in another windowless room with Afghanistan’s president, Ashraf Ghani; its chief executive, Abdullah Abdullah; and its national security adviser, Hanif Atmar, as an armored truck and Humvee guarded outside.
After the men sat down, Tillerson said: “We had a pretty smooth flight.”
Ghani replied, “We arranged the weather for you.”
Tillerson brought with him a six-person media contingent that was taken aside late the night before and sworn to secrecy about the trip until his plane returned to Doha, Qatar, where the trip had originated.
After eight months of internal discussions, President Donald Trump in August announced his policy for Afghanistan, an effort to prevent an obvious loss in the country. Commanders will be allowed to request troops as needed, and the administration emphasized that it would increasingly rely on regional partners like India to improve stability.
Trump also promised to pressure Pakistan, which U.S. officials have long accused of playing a double game in Afghanistan — publicly supporting the U.S. mission while secretly bankrolling and giving shelter to the Taliban and other insurgent groups.
Tillerson said the United States would remain in Afghanistan until peace was restored. Or perhaps until things get much worse.
“The president has made it clear that we’re here to stay until we can secure a process of reconciliation and peace,” he said. “It’s not an unlimited commitment. He’s also made it clear it’s not a blank-check commitment. It’s a conditions-based commitment.”