US forces shut off the Bagram airfield’s electricity supply and did not notify the base’s senior Afghan officer when they departed on Friday, prompting puzzlement and anger among Afghan soldiers there.

The airfield’s new commander, Gen Mir Asadullah Kohistani, only discovered the Americans’ departure more than two hours after they left, he said on Monday.

The fresh details of the American forces’ stealthy nighttime withdrawal from the sprawling base near Kabul, where they had spent two decades, underlined the uneasiness with which US forces sometimes regarded their Afghan partners.

“We [heard] some rumour that the Americans had left Bagram … and finally by 7am we understood that it was confirmed that they had already left” Kohistani told Associated Press.

“We did not know of their timeline for departure. They did not tell us when they left,” added the commander during a tour of the evacuated and now-looted base for journalists.