Trump at odds with US military veterans over snarled Afghan relocations
Washington, DC – When Ruqia Balkhi arrived in the United States in September 2023, she was greeted by a federally funded resettlement agency that helped her launch a new life.
Balkhi, a 55-year-old engineer, was one of the thousands of Afghans who worked alongside the US military during its two-decade-long intervention in her home country.
But after the fall of the US-backed government in 2021, it became unsafe for her to stay in Afghanistan under Taliban leadership.
So she left for the US. During her first 90 days in the country, Balkhi received temporary housing, language lessons, basic goods, mental health support and guidance on enrolling her 15-year-old son in a local school in Virginia.
However, when her husband, Mohammed Aref Mangal, arrived under the same visa programme in January, those services had been abruptly halted. President Donald Trump had just been inaugurated, and the US had tightened restrictions on federal funding and immigration.
“It was completely opposite for my husband,” Balkhi said of the circumstances he faced.
Advocates say her family’s story illustrates how Trump’s broad executive orders might have repercussions even for areas of bipartisan support.
Veteran organisations have largely supported efforts to bring Afghan citizens to safety in the US, particularly if they worked with US forces or the US-backed government.
But in the first days of Trump’s second term, the government paused the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), leaving some already approved Afghan applicants stranded abroad.
Another executive order halted foreign aid. That, in turn, has caused interruptions to the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) programme for Afghans who worked with the US military, like Balkhi and her husband.
Balkhi explained that her husband was luckier than most, given that he had a family already established in the US. But she expressed anguish for those entering the country without the same support system she received.
“Without help from the resettlement agency, I don’t think we would have been able to survive,” she told Al Jazeera in Dari, speaking through a translator provided by the Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area.
Some critics see the issue as a test of just how durable Trump’s hardline policies will be when their full impact becomes clear.
“My request from the new government is that they not forget their commitments to Afghan allies and Afghan immigrants,” Balkhi said.
An early-term ‘mistake’?
Trump’s campaign promises made no secret of his desire to overhaul the US immigration system, to fend off what he decried as a migrant “invasion”.
But his criticism of the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 had sparked hope among those advocating for services for Afghans involved with the US military.
“President Trump campaigned on a bunch of stuff related to Afghanistan, particularly how bad the withdrawal was,” Shawn VanDiver, the founder of #AfghanEvac, an organisation that supports Afghan resettlement.
“So I just don’t believe that he would do that and then not try to help our allies. I’m just hoping this is a mistake.”
In his latest bid for re-election, Trump repeatedly expressed sympathy for those caught up in the August 2021 troop withdrawal, during which a suicide bombing claimed the lives of 13 US service members and 170 Afghans.
Trump also blasted former US President Joe Biden for overseeing the incident, which he called the “Afghanistan calamity”. The day before his inauguration, on January 19, Trump pointedly visited the grave of three soldiers who died during the withdrawal effort.
VanDiver said Trump’s actions from here forward will be critical. If his administration changes course on Afghan resettlement, VanDiver sees that as a hopeful sign.
“But if they don’t change anything, well, then you can be left to conclude that maybe they did mean to do it.”
While Trump’s orders have not directly stopped processing under SIV, they have snarled a pipeline for those seeking relief under the programme, which requires federal funding to operate.
Earlier this month, 10 national organisations that rely on federal support to provide “reception and placement services” received an order to stop work immediately — and incur no further costs.
The State Department’s freeze on foreign aid has also gutted services for those waiting abroad in places like Qatar and Albania, including medical care, food and legal support, VanDiver explained.
Most significantly, Trump’s orders have cut funding for relocation flights run by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Most SIV recipients relied on that transportation reach the US.
“The shutdown of these services isn’t just an inconvenience,” VanDiver said, pointing to the delicate living situations of many Afghans seeking safety. “It could be a death sentence for some of the most vulnerable evacuees.”
Refugee suspension
The SIV programme is not the only one hampered by Trump’s new orders, though.
Refugee resettlement has likewise ground to a halt. Under the previous US administration, Afghans facing persecution from the Taliban could apply for relocation under special refugee categories.
The P1 category was reserved for Afghans referred by the US embassy, while P2 was available for those who worked with the US military, US government-affiliated programmes or nonprofits based in the US. A third category also allowed for family unification, for those with relatives already in the US.
Those pathways have all been closed amid the wider suspension of the US refugee programme.
Kim Staffieri, the executive director of the Association of Wartime Allies, said individuals seeking refuge through those programmes should receive the same urgent attention as SIV recipients.
“There are a lot of people that helped us, who worked for the same goals over there that are very much in danger, but they just don’t qualify for the SIV because it’s got such tight requirements on,” Staffieri said.
She added that she expected Trump’s administration to have given more consideration to Afghan refugees, given the bipartisan support for them.
“We expected some challenges. What we didn’t expect were these broad, sweeping strokes of pausing and suspending necessary programmes,” she told Al Jazeera.
“It feels like either they didn’t have knowledge or they didn’t take time to really think what the downstream effects would be in their entirety.”
Veteran support
Polls have repeatedly shown wide support for resettling Afghans who supported US forces during the war in Afghanistan.
In September 2021, for instance, a poll from NPR and the research firm Ipsos suggested that two-thirds of US respondents backed the relocations, far outpacing support for other groups seeking refuge.
That high level of approval has continued in the years since. An October 2023 poll from the With Honor advocacy group found that 80 percent of respondents signalled continuing support for Afghan resettlement.
US military veterans have been at the forefront of the relocation effort. That demographic, while diverse, typically skews conservative. About 61 percent supported Trump in the 2024 election, according to the Pew Research Center.
Andrew Sullivan, the chief of advocacy and government affairs of No One Left Behind, an SIV advocacy group, described the support as “a matter of national honour and of national security”.
“It is certainly a veterans issue. And so it’s been a bipartisan issue,” said Sullivan.
A veteran of the Afghanistan war himself, Sullivan worked closely alongside an Afghan interpreter when he was an army infantry officer. That interpreter — whom Sullivan identified only by a first name, Ahmadi — has since relocated to the US through the SIV programme.
Sullivan said he was optimistic Trump would eventually create “carve-outs” for Afghans, pointing to the large number of veterans from the Afghanistan conflict in the Republican’s administration.
One of those veterans, former Congressman Mike Waltz, has since become Trump’s White House national security adviser. Waltz previously put pressure on former President Biden to “bring home our Afghan allies”.
Sullivan explained he has repeatedly engaged with Waltz on the issue, and he left feeling hopeful.
“He understands on that personal, visceral level, how much these folks mean to [veterans],” Sullivan said. “So I know he gets it.”
‘A screeching halt’
Other advocates, however, are less hopeful. James Powers, a grassroots organiser from Ohio who focuses on veterans issues, pointed to immigration hardliner Stephen Miller’s role in the new administration.
Miller had served in Trump’s first administration when SIV processing had slowed to a trickle.
“It only makes sense that [the programme] would come to a screeching halt as soon as he got back into power to influence the current president,” Powers said.
Advocates also worried that the years of work to grow the current system were at risk.
Just last year, Congress passed a law with bipartisan support that created a special office to coordinate and streamline SIV relocations.
Over the last four years, the Biden administration also expanded the processing of both SIVs and other Afghan refugee categories. Biden’s government issued 33,341 SIVs in fiscal year 2024, about triple the number issued in 2022, the first full fiscal year following the withdrawal.
Afghan refugee admissions also increased from 1,618 in fiscal year 2022 to 14,708 in 2024.
All told, over 200,000 Afghans have been relocated to the US since the withdrawal, including tens of thousands flown on evacuation flights in the immediate aftermath.
“They’ve got to do a better job,” Powers said of the Trump administration. “There are fair experts on both sides of the aisle, on all ideological spectrums, that will tell them there are better ways.”
Source: Apps Support
Four years after coup, Myanmar regime prepares for ‘violent, messy’ polls
Myanmar’s 2024 census was almost certainly the most contentious – and deadly – ever conducted.
Enumerators and their heavily armed guards from Myanmar’s military were subject to repeated attacks from opposition groups, as they stumbled through a failed attempt to document the country’s population between October and December last year.
One incident in early October saw seven soldiers providing security for census takers in Mandalay Region killed with an explosive device. Days later, three more soldiers were killed when opposition forces hit their vehicle with a shoulder-launched rocket in Kayin State in the country’s east.
“The census was an utter, abject failure,” Richard Horsey, Myanmar adviser to the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera.
“But the regime has declared it a marvellous success.”
What is generally a mundane administrative exercise in population counting in most parts of the world, that Myanmar’s census was met with such violent resistance speaks to its significance in the country’s democratic trajectory.
Publishing preliminary results in January, Myanmar’s Ministry of Immigration and Population said the census represents the military government’s “commitment to national reconciliation”.
But it also represents the final step before the military attempts to hold a national election later this year – the first since overthrowing Myanmar’s democratically elected government in a coup four years ago and igniting a civil war.
While the military has painted a potential vote as a return to democratic norms, for Myanmar’s opposition forces, elections are merely an attempt to legitimise the illegitimate regime that seized power in February 2021.
The “election will be a sham, it will just be for show”, said Zaw Kyaw, a spokesperson for the presidential office at the National Unity Government (NUG), an exiled administration that includes lawmakers ousted by the military.
“The military believes that [holding an election] will be an exit strategy, and they can get some legitimacy in the eyes of some countries by hosting a sham election,” he told Al Jazeera.
“But this election will not lead to stability. It will lead to more instability and more violence.”
‘Absolutely no credible data’
In November 2020, State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi led her National League for Democracy (NLD) party to a landslide victory in Myanmar’s general election, winning 82 percent of seats contested in the country’s national and regional parliaments.
Three months later, in the early hours of February 1, the military would overthrow Aung San Suu Kyi’s government, arresting her and other NLD figures. Justifying the coup, the military alleged massive NLD voter fraud in the polls and declared the results void, without providing any evidence of wrongdoing. The coup triggered nationwide pro-democracy protests, morphing into an armed rebellion that continues to engulf large swaths of the country today.
The military-installed government – led by Senior General Min Aung Hlaing as its prime minister, and more recently president – has ruled the country since 2021 under a state of emergency that it has renewed several times as it battles ethnic armed groups and newer pro-democracy fighters across the country.
On Friday, the military extended the state of emergency a further six months to July 31.
“There are still more tasks to be done to hold the general election successfully,” the military said, announcing the extension of emergency rule.
“Especially for a free and fair election, stability and peace is still needed,” it said.
Myanmar’s military said its goal for the 2024 census was to provide an “accurate” voter list for the next election.
Such a list would prevent the double-counting of ballots and the participation of ineligible voters, stamping out the widespread voter fraud it claims corrupted the vote in 2020.
“The junta produced absolutely no credible data,” said Khin Ohmar, founder of democracy and human rights group Progressive Voice.
“The junta’s sham census lacked coverage of major swaths of territory and large segments of the population, particularly in areas controlled by democratic resistance groups or revolutionary forces,” she told Al Jazeera.
By its own account, Myanmar’s Ministry of Immigration and Population said it only fully counted populations in 145 out of Myanmar’s 330 townships, which appears to indicate the military now controls less than half the country.
Despite the limited census data, the ministry said it was “profoundly grateful to the people of Myanmar for their enthusiastic participation”, describing the census as a “resounding success”.
Khin Ohmar said the reality is that members of the public who participated in the census were forced “into providing personal data”, often “at gunpoint”.
“It is clear that the junta will continue to use these violent tactics against civilians for its sham election,” she said.
“Any public participation is guaranteed to have been coerced by the military junta,” she added.
Myanmar’s military government did not respond to repeated requests for comment from Al Jazeera.
A crisis of an ‘unprecedented scale’
Just how high stakes elections are for Myanmar’s severely weakened military cannot be overstated.
While proclamations of its imminent demise have been frequent since the coup, the once unlikely goal of a regime-free Myanmar now looks more achievable than ever as the military has suffered serious setbacks since late 2023.
In October that year the Three Brotherhood Alliance – a coalition of ethnic armed groups: the Arakan Army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army – carried out a devastating assault on military-controlled territory in northern Shan State.
Setbacks for the regime continued into 2024 with the military experiencing its worst territorial and personnel losses in its history. Some 91 towns and 167 military battalions fell to resistance forces in a crisis of an “unprecedented scale”, according to the United States Institute of Peace.
Plummeting morale has also seen a “historic surge in defections” from the army.
In the context of diminishing control and increasingly robust violent resistance, critics say holding a national election is a fanciful notion.
The regime’s Election Commission Chairman Ko Ko said in December the polls would be held in just under half of the country’s 330 townships nationwide. But even this figure appears unduly optimistic.
Myanmar’s pro-democracy resistance groups and anti-military government ethnic armed organisations increasingly see the military as there for the taking.
While the ousted NLD administration, in government between 2015 and 2021, attempted to strike a balance between civilian and military rule during the country’s short-lived democratic experiment, a return to the pre-coup status quo of military officials in government is no longer an option.
“Our main goal [in 2025] is to eliminate the military dictatorship,” the NUG’s Zaw Kyaw said.
“The military is weaker than it has ever been in Myanmar’s history,” he added.
Despite the inherent security risks, Horsey of the Crisis Group believes national polls look “increasingly likely” this year.
Time is also ticking for Min Aung Hlaing, Horsey says, as grumbling grows louder from within the military establishment.
“There is pressure from within the elite to hold these polls. They don’t want Min Aung Hlaing ensconced as dictator-for-life. Most don’t relish the prospect of him sticking around forever,” Horsey said.
“He’s consolidated all power in his own hands and they want a slice of the action,” he said.
The military’s most influential patron, China, “has also been pushing very hard”, Horsey added.
“[China] has no interest in electoral democracy, but they do not like [Min Aung Hlaing] and think elections will be a way of diluting his power. Perhaps even bringing more reasonable, predictable and amendable people to the fore,” he said.
One group not pushing for elections in Myanmar is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
The 10-member bloc, of which Myanmar is a member, has been bitterly divided on the issue. But ASEAN foreign ministers issued a joint statement in January telling the regime that holding an election amid an escalating civil war should not be a “priority”.
‘Violent, messy’ and ‘bizarre exercise’
Under Myanmar’s military-drafted 2008 constitution, authorities are mandated to hold elections within six months of the state of emergency being lifted – currently set for July 31 – with November the traditional month to do so.
But for the vast majority of Myanmar’s embattled population, what month the military will hold the sham polls is irrelevant.
Holding “elections are an absolute anathema to most people” in Myanmar, the Crisis Group’s Horsey said.
“It is seen as – and is – an attempt [by the military] to wipe away the NLD and Aung San Suu Kyi’s landslide victory five years ago,” he said.
“That is something that people just will not accept and they will resist.”
Such resistance was already evident in the attacks disrupting the census, and Horsey believes the elections will similarly be a “violent, messy, incomplete process”.
“Who in their right mind would campaign, open party offices, and participate in the election? There’s going to be ambushes, attacks, assassinations – it’s going to be very very dangerous,” he said.
“It’s going to be a bizarre exercise, something that no one else, I think, would recognise as an election.”
While Horsey said there was a “consensus” among most resistance groups that civilians involved in the census should not be attacked, he believes the stakes are higher for the elections and polling stations will “absolutely be seen as a legitimate target”.
The NUG’s Zaw Kyaw said while there will “definitely” be attacks on military targets by the People’s Defence Force (PDF), there will be “no attacks on civilians” participating in the vote.
But even if violence targeting civilians is limited, punitive action of various forms will almost certainly be taken against those deemed to be collaborating with the military regime.
During the census, nine enumerators, mostly female teachers, were arrested and held for more than a month by PDF fighters in Myanmar’s southern Tanintharyi Region.
Bo Sea, a Tanintharyi PDF spokesman, told Al Jazeera that while the group recognises some civilians are forced into participating in election preparations, those deemed willing collaborators will face “even more severe” punishment than census participants.
“We consider these people as collaborating with the junta’s election process as accomplices,” he said. “There will be civilian teachers and election officials involved. Their participation means they are aligning themselves with the junta,” he added.
Bo Sea is not alone.
Ko Aung Kyaw Hein, a spokesman for the PDF in Sagaing Region in Myanmar’s northwest, said those who “support the terrorist military council [in carrying out the elections] will be prosecuted under counterterrorism laws”.
Bo Than Mani, chief of the Yinmarbin PDF, also in Sagaing Region, told Al Jazeera his unit will “disrupt” the election, but denied it would conduct violent attacks against those participating.
What is clear, at least to those in Myanmar’s resistance, is that regardless of how the national elections play out, it represents a desperate act by a desperate, sinking military regime.
“Their morale is at the lowest,” Zaw Kyaw said.
“I cannot predict when the collapse will happen. It could happen tomorrow. It could happen in months. It could happen in a year,” he said.
“But definitely the military will fall. No one can stop the military from falling down.”
Additional reporting by Hein Thar.
Source: Alastair McCready