WION exclusive ground report: Bagram base, once the citadel of US troops in Afghanistan, is now a ghost town

Bagram is located about an hour's drive from Afghanistan's capital city of Kabul. It is known mainly for three things - the famous Bagram airbase, Bagram prison and the market outside which usually had smuggled foreign goods.

WION was allowed access to the Bagram airbase which now has an uneasy divide within. It has the Bagram prison on one side and the airbase is more like a city in itself. Bagram airbase was constructed by the Soviet Union in the 1950s. However, during the "war on terror", the base was manned by the US Army.

Bagram now wears a deserted look – no jets, cars or traffic. The base now looks like a ghost town. The staircases for planes, hangars and parking areas were used to house the aeroplanes, however, in most cases, fighter jets and even helicopters all remain empty now.

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Nearby in one of the hangars that WION visited a Blackhawk helicopter was parked which once belonged to the Afghan Army. The helicopter now is not in operational condition.

Taliban fighters can now be seenat the airbase with some holding RPGs. Taliban are now in charge and stand guard at the airbase.

After the removal of the Taliban and the formation of the Karzai administration, the US had taken control of the base. The US did not need the volume of hangar space, so it built a detention facility inside the large unused hangars.

Bagram prison was built by the Americans following their invasion. Initially,it was intended to be a temporary facility. It was used for much longer and handled more detainees than the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

Abdul Baseer, a former political prisoner, spoke out about his ordeal at Bagram prison, "I'm from Kabul, and I was detained as a political prisoner in 2016, and I spent 55 days in solitary confinement. This is the location where hell was poured out on us. We were given very little food. We weren't even allowed to go out in the sun with them. We felt as if we were going blind since the light was so bright."

In the prison, plenty of material and equipment has been left behind by the US forces ranging from protective riot gear to containers that bear the sign"Property of US Army". The rooms where at one time dreaded terrorists or terror suspects were kept, now one finds the same people on guard duty.

Bagram prison is divided into multiple facilities. The first and foremost is the biometric facility which was known as the DSB unit. Now, a pile of files, documents and passports can be seen here.

After being put through the DSB, inmates were allotted their numbers. These numbers were their identity. There were all sorts of prisoners from alleged terrorists and terror accused to those foisted with false identification. Their data was stored against theiridentification numbers.These numbers allowed the inmates to be identified. Ithadall the details.

The notorious or dreaded inmates were taken to the Fox Block which had a specific unit called the “American Show” - the facility increasingly resembled a movie where jails in America were shown.

"In 2008, America attacked Logar with six planes and over 300 men, and that's when I and my colleagues were arrested. We were then brought to an American base for three days before being transferred to the black jail within Bagram prison for 16 days, "said Maulvi Saeed Haroon Hashmi of Logar Province.

Some of the inmates were released as a result of the recent jailbreak by the Taliban following their takeover of the country. The inmates alleged that the US forces did not let them sleep or take rest and used to bang on the roof of the cells. They even showed WION how it was done.

An up-close look at the cell shows the square-shaped cell had little or no amenities. This is where the most feared inmates were kept in solitary confinement.

Slightly ahead in the same block, WION found plenty of clothes as the Taliban members re-enacted and showed us what went where.

A black cloth was put on the correspondent's face so that nothing could be visible. Headphones were put on our ears and we were not able to hear or say anything. It was done in order to prevent us from interacting with other inmates. Their clothes were changed after three or perhaps four months even as we were allowed to wash them.

Prisoners were shifted at times from solitary confinement in the same block to a common area with other high profile inmates.

The interrogation or interviews, as they were called, were done in another block known as the "Charlie Block". Just before the interrogation room, a person had to cross the MHU or Medical Health Unit.

The interrogation room had soundproof walls to bar any noise from going in or out of the room. Ropes allegedly used during interrogation were also found. Documents and photos of wanted terrorists remained scattered around on the side of the prison.

On the other side of the interrogation room, quite a walk from the Fox and the Charlie blocks is the common room which was used to house inmates. It looks more like a common cell and used to house as many as 33 people.

Bagram prison was once Afghanistan's most notorious, high-profile detention centre with little or no accountability with the prison and its vicinity being shrouded in secrecy.

With the US forces leaving, the infrastructure which has the capacity to house 7,000 inmates and used to house over 5,500 till recently now stands empty with the Taliban standing guard.