Parwan

Parwan controls Afghanistan's strategic infrastructure—both the Bagram Airfield and the Salang Tunnel that connects north and south. The 2.6-kilometer tunnel through the Hindu Kush, reopened in 2023 after war damage, carries an estimated 5,000 vehicles daily on the main route between Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif. Whoever controls Parwan controls the commercial lifeline linking Afghanistan's north to its capital.

Bagram Airfield, the largest airbase in Afghanistan, adds military significance to geographic centrality. Built by the Soviets in the 1950s, expanded by the Americans after 2001, it now lies 60 kilometers north of Kabul under Taliban control. In September 2025, President Trump disclosed the US was "trying" to regain possession of the base—an effort the Taliban rejected. CNN reported negotiations had been underway for at least six months. In April 2025, a C-17 allegedly landed at Bagram carrying CIA officials, though the Taliban dismissed reports as propaganda. The base's strategic value persists: its location complicates Russian and Chinese corridor plans while giving any occupying power surveillance over the Salang chokepoint.

The ethnic dimension matters. Parwan sits in the heartland of Afghanistan's ethnic Tajik population—communities historically hostile to Pashtun-dominated Taliban rule and the backbone of anti-Taliban resistance. On August 14, 2024, the Taliban celebrated their third anniversary of victory at Bagram, but celebration cannot erase the demographic reality that local populations never fully accepted their authority. The province demonstrates how geography creates lasting strategic value that persists regardless of which faction controls it—the tunnel and airbase matter to every empire that seeks to hold Afghanistan.