Afghanistan
What's Behind The New Wave Of Violence In Pakistan's Balochistan?
Balochistan, a vast mineral-rich province in southwestern Pakistan, has been the scene of a simmering separatist insurgency for nearly a quarter-century.
But a remarkable rise in violent attacks in the strategic region bordering Afghanistan and Iran and home to the marginalized Baluch minority has highlighted the region's fragility.
On March 16, the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), a separatist militant group pursuing Balochistan's secession from Pakistan, claimed an attack on security forces in the remote district of Noshki.
Pakistani officials said the attack, a suicide truck bomb, killed three soldiers and two civilians. But the BLA claimed the attack killed 90 soldiers.
Train Hijacking
Just last week, the group declared a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, and others hijacked a passenger train in Balochistan's historic Bolan Pass.
The unprecedented attack, even by the standards of Pakistan's violent recent past, went on for more than 36 hours.
The BLA claimed it killed hundreds of members of the security forces traveling on the train.
The Pakistani Army, however, said it killed dozens of militants in a successful rescue operation that freed most of the hostages.
RFE/RL could not independently verify the conflicting claims of the two sides in the sparsely populated region inaccessible to journalists.
But the rising violence marked a significant escalation at a critical time for Pakistan as the Muslim nation of 250 million people reels from political turmoil, economic downturn, and an escalating insurgency by the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Islamic State-Khorasan in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province.
"The major drivers of the worsening conflict are changes within the BLA and the worsening political and economic crises," said Zafar Baloch, a Balochistan researcher based in Britain.
"The current outcome was predictable because the BLA has transformed," he said.
He said that during the past seven years, the BLA turned from a nationalist insurgent group into "a highly sophisticated, disciplined militant group, which now possesses sophisticated arms."
Pakistani officials have frequently blamed the easy availability of sophisticated US arms left behind in Afghanistan. Groups such as the BLA and TTP now use sophisticated night-vision goggles, sniper rifles, and other military gear possibly acquired from Afghanistan.
Since the Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan, violence by both the Baluch separatist rebels and Islamist TTP has been on the rise.
Pakistan has blamed Afghanistan's Taliban government and its regional archrival India for the rising violence. Kabul and New Delhi have rejected Islamabad's claims.
During the past year, Baluch separatists carried out 175 attacks, up from 110 the year before. These attacks killed and injured nearly 700 people, most of whom were members of the security forces.
Imtiaz Baloch, an analyst covering Balochistan for Khorasan Diary, a website tracking militant groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan, said the BLA's increasing organizational sophistication is behind the rising violence.
He said the Majeed Brigade, the BLA's suicide squad, which works under its central command led by its leader Bashir Zeb, is now capable of planning and conducting sophisticated attacks.
"Their intelligence-gathering capacity has increased, which results in meticulous planning for attacks such as taking an entire train hostage," he said.
"Now they appear capable of successfully laying traps for the security forces," he said.
Increasingly Sophisticated Attacks
In addition to the Majeed Brigade, the BLA claims to have separate guerrilla, special forces, and intelligence units that have launched increasingly sophisticated attacks against Pakistani troops and Chinese workers involved in numerous infrastructure, energy, and mineral extraction projects in Balochistan.
Baloch, the analyst in Islamabad, argues the Pakistani government's failure to win over Balochistan's alienated residents through a genuine political process and dispensing justice has harmed its legitimacy in the impoverished region where literacy and development levels are low.
"The state is unable to connect to and address the problems of ordinary citizens," he said.
Experts maintain that Balochistan's political crises have been extenuated by Islamabad's strategy of supporting figures loyal to the military over ethno-nationalist parties that hold genuine popularity among the Baluch populace.
However, these Baluch political parties, whose leaders have led most elected provincial governments since the 1970s, lost controversial parliamentary elections in February 2024.
The Baluch parties accused Islamabad of widespread rigging in the province.
Sarafaz Bugti, a Baluch politician supported by the military, promised to defeat militant groups by promoting good governance and bringing development to Balochistan.
But a year later, violence in Balochistan is mounting, which has added to public skepticism of Islamabad's promises.
"The Baluch have given up on parliamentary politics, which has increased the lure of groups such as the BLA for the youth," said Baloch, the researcher in Britain.
Every Two Hours A Woman Dies During Childbirth In Afghanistan
Every two hours. That's how often a woman dies during childbirth in Afghanistan.
The staggering maternal mortality rate is one of the highest in the world. And under the repressive rule of the Taliban, the situation is only getting worse.
Among the victims was a young woman who died during childbirth in her village in the northwestern province of Badghis in December.
"Both my sister and her unborn child died," said Fereshta, the woman's sister. "There are no midwives or any health centers in our area."
Fereshta did not name her sister, who she said was in her 20s and had three young children.
In Afghanistan, at least 638 mothers died for every 100,000 births, according to the UN figures for 2024. The real number could be even higher as some cases go unreported, especially in remote areas.
The UN said many of the deaths were due to preventable pregnancy complications exacerbated by severe shortages in qualified birth attendants and an under resourced health-care system.
Rising Maternal Deaths
The maternal mortality rate in Afghanistan was 1,346 for every 100,000 births in 2000, during the Taliban's first stint in power. The ratio dropped to 629 in 2020 due to generous international support and development aid.
But since the Taliban regained power in 2021, the number of deaths during childbirth has increased again.
The public health-care system in Afghanistan, which was largely funded by foreign aid for nearly two decades, has been in freefall since the Taliban seized power and international donors immediately cut financial funding.
While some foreign aid organizations continue to operate in Afghanistan, many of them have been forced to curb their work as international funding diminishes.
In a major blow, the United States, the largest foreign donor, paused its humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan in January.
The UN estimates that the absence of the US aid in Afghanistan could result in 1,200 additional maternal deaths between 2025 and 2028.
Exacerbating the situation, the Taliban has banned women from attending university and severely restricted their job opportunities, including in the health sector.
In December, the hard-line Islamist group banned women from attending medical institutes that offered classes in midwifery, nursing, dental hygiene, and laboratory science.
Tom Fletcher, the UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, said the ban is set to prevent more than 36,000 midwives and 2,800 female nurses from joining the country's health sector in the foreseeable future.
Taliban 'Does Not Care About Women's Health'
A midwife at Kabul, who spoke to RFE/RL on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said the Taliban "does not care about women's health, as if this issue does not exist."
The woman, who has worked in state hospitals for more than two decades, said women's lack of access to information about maternal health is also an ongoing issue.
The high maternity rate in Afghanistan, she said, "is not only about a lack of access to a clinic or a midwife during childbirth."
"Expectant mothers should be under constant monitoring of clinics from the early stages of pregnancy," she added. "But in many cases in Afghanistan, even in big cities, pregnant women come to hospital only when they have some major health issue or only to give birth."
Afghan Survivors Speak Out: What The Taliban Does To Imprisoned Women
Today, Afghan women face more than 100 restrictions -- controlling everything from their appearance and movement to their right to work and study. Those accused of violating the Taliban’s so-called "morality laws" are often detained and arrested. What happens to those who suddenly find themselves behind bars in Taliban prisons? These stories often go untold, as most victims of the regime are threatened or forced into silence.
Pakistan Sets April 1 Deadline For 'Afghan Card' Holders, 'Illegal Foreigners' To Leave
Pakistan ordered Afghan Citizen Card (ACC) holders and “all illegal foreigners" to leave the country, either voluntarily or through deportation starting on April 1, raising fears among the Afghan community of repression should they return to their homeland.
“The Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Program has been implemented since November 1, 2023. In continuation to government’s decision to repatriate all illegal foreigners, national leadership has now decided to also repatriate ACC holders,” the Pakistani Interior Ministry said in a statement on March 7.
“All illegal foreigners and ACC holders are advised to leave the country voluntarily before March 31, 2025; thereafter, deportation will commence on April 1,” it added.
The ministry said that “sufficient time” has been given for the “dignified” departure of those affected and it pledged that “no one will be maltreated during the repatriation process.”
The Pakistani government has often blamed militant violence and criminal activity on Afghan citizens, allegations rejected by the extremist Taliban-led government in Kabul.
Islamabad accuses the Taliban of providing a safe haven for extremists linked to Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TPP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, inside Afghanistan, charges the government in Kabul also rejects.
In late January, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government approved a plan to repatriate ACC holders but did not specify a date.
An Afghan woman in Pakistan told RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal on condition of anonymity that she had fled to Pakistan because the Taliban had violated basic human rights in Afghanistan.
"We call on the government of Pakistan to retract what it has said regarding us at this difficult time," she said.
Qaiser Khan Afridi, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Islamabad, told Radio Mashaal on March 7 that he is continuing to discuss the fate of Afghans with officials of the Pakistani government.
Pakistan's government in late 2023 launched the effort to repatriate foreign citizens -- the majority of whom are Afghans -- first focusing on foreigners with no legal documentation but now including those with the ACC, a document that had allowed Afghan asylum-seekers to temporarily remain in Pakistan.
When the repatriation program was announced, Abbas Khan, Pakistan's commissioner of Afghan refugees, told RFE/RL that refugees were given ACC documentation in 2016 in an agreement among the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan and the UNHCR.
"They agreed that those citizens would be gradually returned to Afghanistan. But that did not happen," Khan said.
Pakistan has been a popular refuge for Afghans for decades, beginning during the 1979-89 Soviet occupation. Others fled fighting during the ensuing Afghan civil war and the Taliban's first stint in power from 1996 to 2001.
Millions of Afghans returned to their homeland following the U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban from power.
But after the Taliban seized power again in 2021 amid the withdrawal of international forces, an estimated 700,000 more Afghans left for Pakistan to escape a devastating economic and humanitarian crisis and possible retribution by the Taliban.
According to UN data, more than 800,000 Afghans hold ACC status in Pakistan. Another 1.3 million are formally registered with the Pakistan government and hold a separate Proof of Residence (PoR) card. The statement did not mention the effect on those with PoR status.
The UN has estimated that at the peak, some 3.8 million Afghan refugees were in Pakistan, although Islamabad put the number at above 4.4 million.
Some 15,000 Afghans in Pakistan are awaiting to be approved for resettlement in the United States, although their status remains unclear after President Donald Trump's administration announced that the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) would be suspended for at least three months starting on January 27.
With reporting by Reuters
Pakistan's Arrest Of Islamic State Operative Signals Renewed U.S. Cooperation
Pakistan's arrest of a suspected Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) operative and his extradition to the United States signals renewed counterterrorism cooperation between the two countries, experts said.
The United States accuses Mohammad Sharifullah, a suspected senior member of IS-K, the Afghanistan branch of Islamic State, of helping plan the 2021 suicide bombing outside Kabul airport that killed 13 American soldiers and 170 Afghans.
Sharifullah appeared in a US federal court on March 5. He did not enter a plea, and he will next appear in court on March 10. He will stay in custody until then, the judge said.
Sharifullah has been charged with providing "material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization resulting in death" and faces life in prison.
Pakistan said Sharifullah, also known as Jafar, was arrested recently in the country's southwestern province of Balochistan, near the border with Afghanistan. It came after Pakistani intelligence reportedly received a tip from the CIA.
Islamabad's strategic importance has waned since the US and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
But Sharifullah's capture and extradition is "a very notable development," said Lucas Webber, senior threat intelligence analyst at Tech Against Terrorism, an UN-backed project that monitors extremism online.
Webber said it could point to "signs of more coordination to come between the two countries."
US President Donald Trump thanked Islamabad "for helping arrest this monster" during his State of the Union address on March 4.
Meanwhile, Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif thanked Trump for recognizing his country's role in counterterrorism efforts and pledged to "continue to partner closely with the United States in securing regional peace and stability."
Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud, news director at the Khorasan Diary, a website tracking militant groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan, said Pakistan's handover of Sharifullah is a significant boost to relations between Washington and Islamabad.
"It gave Trump something to showcase during an important occasion," he said.
Islamic State In Afghanistan
Based in Afghanistan, IS-K has carried out deadly attacks against the Taliban, which seized power in 2021.
The extremist group has also staged a series of devastating, high-profile assaults in Russia, Iran, and Tajikistan in recent years.
Webber said Sharifullah's capture is a "major event in the US fight against IS-K."
Pakistani officials said Sharifullah is an Afghan citizen, a claim rejected by the Taliban government.
US officials said Sharifullah admitted to being a member of IS-K and to his role in the August 2021 bombing, one of the deadliest attacks of the entire 19-year US-led war in Afghanistan.
Sharifullah also confessed to training the suspected IS-K militants involved in the March 2024 attack on a concert hall outside Moscow that killed around 140 people, according to the Justice Department.
The department said he also played a role in a deadly attack on the Canadian Embassy in Kabul in 2016, which killed 10 guards.
"IS-K is highly multifaceted, expanding its operational cells and networks," said Webber. "It's a very dynamic, robust, internationally reaching organization and poses a serious threat."
American Porn Star Whitney Wright Sparks Fury With Trip To Afghanistan
Afghanistan's Islamist Taliban rulers have banned education and most jobs for Afghan women, who are also barred from parks, gyms, and bathhouses.
They are not supposed to leave their houses without a male guardian and live under draconian Taliban morality laws.
With such constraints, Afghan women are furious after photos and videos emerged of an American porn actor visiting their country.
While the Taliban has not acknowledged the visit, adult film star Whitney Wright posted photos of her visit to an Afghan tourist landmark on her Instagram account.
"It is fundamentally hypocritical," said Wazhma Tokhi, an Afghan women's rights and education activist.
"Afghan women are imprisoned in their own homeland, while foreign visitors -- no matter their background -- are treated with hospitality," she added.
In recent years, Wright has visited the predominantly Muslim nations of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.
RFE/RL's Radio Azadi couldn't reach the Taliban or Wright for comment.
The U.S. State Department currently advises Americans to "not travel to Afghanistan for any reason" because "multiple terrorist groups are active in Afghanistan and US citizens are targets of kidnapping and hostage-taking."
Wright would require a visa as a US citizen, although the Taliban's unrecognized government does not control the Afghan Embassy or consulates in the United States.
The Taliban has been keen on wooing foreign tourists to boost its international image and showcase the significant drop in violence in the country since it returned to power in August 2021.
Some Afghan women have said the Taliban is using female tourists to cultivate a positive image and highlight how safe the country is even for foreign women.
"This freedom is only for foreigners, not for Afghan women who are deprived of their most basic rights," Nasima Bidargar, an Afghan women's rights activist, told RFE/RL's Radio Azadi.
'Gender Apartheid' In Afghanistan
After returning to power in August 2021, the Taliban immediately banned teenage girls from school. It closed the doors of universities and other seats of higher learning to women in December 2022. The extremist group has also banned women from working for international NGOs and other sectors.
Even public parks exclusively reserved for women and restaurants and cafes owned or frequented by women have been shut down by the Taliban regime.
In August 2024, the Taliban enacted a new morality law specifically targeting women by requiring them to be accompanied by a male chaperone in public while covering their faces. It also banned women from singing or even raising their voices in public.
Senior United Nations officials and Afghan female activists have termed the Taliban's treatment of Afghan women as a "gender apartheid."
In January, the International Criminal Court requested arrest warrants for the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, and the Taliban's Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani for bearing "criminal responsibility for the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds."
Dressed in a black veil, Wright posted a video on Facebook of her walking in the snow near Band-e Amir. The famed crystal-blue lakes and soaring cliffs are one of the most popular national parks in Afghanistan's central province of Bamiyan. In August 2023, the Taliban banned Afghan women from the park.
"As an Afghan woman, this situation is harrowing for me," a female resident of Bamiyan told Radio Azadi.
Doctors Swamped With Malnourished Children At Afghan Hospital
Doctors at a hospital in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar have told RFE/RL they've admitted 5,500 malnourished children in the last six months alone. That number is just a small fraction of the nearly 3 million children in Afghanistan who are suffering from malnutrition, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Taliban Declares End To Doha Agreement With The United States
Afghanistan’s hard-line Islamist Taliban rulers say they no longer consider the Doha agreement -- a peace deal with the United States that paved the way for the withdrawal of Western forces from the country -- to be valid.
Speaking on February 28, the fifth anniversary of the agreement, chief Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the accord was limited to a particular time frame, which has now expired.
“The Islamic Emirate has its own governance system, and now we are no longer moving forward based on that agreement,” he told the state TV.
Mujahid said that the Taliban had fulfilled its key obligation under the agreement by preventing Afghanistan from becoming a launchpad for terrorist attacks against Washington and its allies.
He called on Washington to “take positive steps to engage with Afghanistan” and help in removing the Taliban leaders from international sanctions lists.
The Doha agreement paved the way for the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan in return for the Taliban’s counterterrorism guarantees.
However, crucial parts of the agreement requiring talks among Afghans to form a new transitional government were never fully implemented.
Some U.S. officials have blamed the Doha agreement for prompting the collapse of the pro-Western Afghan republic ahead of the final U.S. military withdrawal on August 31, 2021.
The agreement was negotiated and concluded by the first administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.
In a September presidential election campaign debate, he defended the deal as "a very good agreement" and blamed his successor, President Joe Biden, for the death of soldiers during the withdrawal, as well as for leaving behind weapons and failing to enforce the terms of the agreement.
Today, Afghans have mixed views about the agreement.
“The Doha agreement was a positive development because it ended the four-decades-long war in Afghanistan,” Anwar, a resident of the central Ghazni Province, told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi.
One Kabul resident said negotiations among Afghans would have produced a better outcome for their country.
While the Taliban seized power in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal, no country has yet formally recognized its government.
Inside Afghanistan, the Taliban has established a government led by its clerical leadership.
It has implemented harsh bans on the education, employment, mobility and public role of Afghan women, which has turned it into an international pariah.
Deadly Blast Rocks Pro-Taliban Seminary In Pakistan
A powerful explosion at a seminary in northwestern Pakistan has killed at least seven people, including a top cleric.
The Jamia Haqqania seminary in Akkora Khattak, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, is renowned for training key Taliban figures.
Local officials said that those killed in the blast on February 28 include Hamid ul-Haq Haqqani, a Pakistani politician and deputy head of the seminary.
Provincial police chief Zulfiqar Hameed told reporters that initial evidence suggests the explosion was caused by a suicide bomber specifically targeting Haqqani.
The Taliban, which returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021, said in a statement that it "strongly condemns" the attack on the religious school
No group has claimed responsibility for the incident.
Bilal Faizi, a spokesperson for the local emergency services, told RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal that least 20 people were injured in the explosion.
- By Ray Furlong
AfD Surges As Afghan Attack Suspects Put Migrants At Heart Of German Elections
As Germany heads into pivotal federal elections on February 23, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is making unprecedented gains.
But the party has also faced strong opposition from people who accuse it of exploiting a series of brutal attacks by migrants for political ends.
The most recent case was in the Bavarian town of Aschaffenburg, in which police arrested an Afghan man after a knife attack on a kindergarten group that left a 2-year-old boy and an adult male dead.
“He was supposed to have been deported,” said Hermann Priegnitz, an AfD candidate who was spending the morning hanging election posters on lampposts, told RFE/RL.
He was voicing a common lament, also made by Germany’s Social Democrat Interior Minister Nancy Faeser. But the AfD has more radical policies on migration than any other party.
It calls for “remigration,” meaning mass deportations of Syrians and Afghans.
Critics accuse the AfD of racism or even fascism. Germany’s domestic intelligence service is surveilling it for suspected right-wing extremism.
Priegnitz says the party is being targeted, showing me a video of people tearing down their posters. Today, he was using a ladder to place them out of reach.
He strongly defends remigration, rejecting the idea that it puts people in danger.
“There has always been conflict in Afghanistan, where various tribes fight each other. We can’t make peace for them here in Germany. These tribes, these people, the inhabitants of Afghanistan should do this in their own country.”
Later that day, we visited Sara Seerat. She used to work at the Women’s Ministry in Kabul, and was awarded the Franco-German Human Rights Prize in 2020 for her work helping Afghan girls and women gain access to education and employment.
'I Did Not Feel Safe'
After the Taliban regained power in 2021, she was invited to Germany on humanitarian grounds, along with her two brothers and her parents. The family now shares a small two-bedroom flat on the edge of Berlin.
Seerat said that the attack in Aschaffenburg left her and many Afghans shocked and concerned.
“I personally did not feel safe. Because when I went outside or to class, I thought everyone was looking at me and thinking: ‘She is an Afghan with similar thoughts, and she could be dangerous for our country’.”
She is indeed not alone in this. A few days before we talked to the AfD, a video went viral in Germany of a 12-year-old Afghan girl breaking down in tears after apologizing for the attack at a public meeting. She was comforted by an adult who told her that, of course, she had nothing to apologize for.
Seerat said she was worried about the way events like these were affecting German society, but did not fear that mass deportations would become reality. She noted that no other party has promoted the idea, and that the AfD is highly unlikely to become part of a new governing coalition after the election.
There has for years been a taboo in Germany on working with the AfD. But its hard line on migration, coupled with several attacks over the last 12 months, has arguably had an influence on German politics.
'People Are Asking For A Stricter Regime'
Other parties have also promised to be “tough” on migration and, last year, Germany put 28 Afghans on a deportation flight to Kabul.
Interior Minister Faeser said it was the only European country doing so.
Recently, the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), likely election winners, voted with the AfD in parliament to promote tighter border controls.
This led to nationwide mass protests, with some 250,000 people gathering in Munich to condemn the CDU/CSU breaking the “firewall” around the AfD.
CDU/CSU lawmaker Juergen Hardt told us he had no difficultly explaining his party’s stance in his constituency. He represents the western town of Solingen, where three people were killed and eight injured in a mass stabbing in August. The attack was claimed by the extremist Islamic State group, and the police arrested a Syrian suspect.
“Two of the victims in Solingen were from a sports club there. There was an annual reception at that sports club, and it was hard to be there because two people were missing,” he said.
“People in Germany are asking for a stricter regime on asylum seekers.”
The day after our meeting with Sara Seerat, a car plowed into a crowd in Munich. The police said they had arrested the driver, an Afghan man, and were investigating an attack with an Islamist motive.
A 37-year-old Algerian-German woman and her 2-year-old daughter were killed. The family made a plea that the attack not be misused for political purposes.
But it has, once again, pushed the issue of migration front and center of Germany’s election.
- By RFE/RL
Trump Praises Musk For Work Cutting Government Waste
U.S. President Donald Trump defended his decision to give billionaire businessman Elon Musk a major role in his administration as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) amid backlash over the freezing of funding for USAID, which affected foreign assistance programs around the world.
Trump curtailed the U.S. Agency for International Development work when he ordered a 90-day spending freeze on January 24. The decision affected numerous businesses and nonprofit groups in Ukraine, which are now struggling to cope. It also affected aid programs for people in Afghanistan.
Trump and Musk touched on the move during their first joint TV interview, which aired on February 18 on Fox News, a conservative U.S. news outlet. Trump said he took the step to freeze USAID's funding because his predecessor, President Joe Biden, overspent, including on foreign aid that he said did not serve U.S. interests, and widened the deficit.
Since 2022, USAID has provided Ukraine with billions of dollars in humanitarian aid, development assistance, and direct budget support. Musk and Trump were not asked about the suspension of aid to the programs in Ukraine during the interview or Trump's diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine.
The interview focused more on Trump's relationship with Musk, the world’s richest man, and why he chose him to head DOGE.
“I know a lot of businessmen and they are not necessarily good people,” Trump said. Musk is a great person who “wants to see the country do well,” Trump told Fox News interviewer Sean Hannity, who is a friend of the president.
DOGE has been rooting out government waste, fraud, and abuse, Trump said, and has already saved American taxpayers millions of dollars.
Since Trump returned to office on January 20, DOGE has gone from department to department, laying off or firing thousands of government employees in a major shakeup of the federal government designed to cut costs and shrink its size. A list of programs that have been identified, some costing hundreds of millions of dollars, scrolled on the screen during the joint interview.
Musk said he took the role to reduce the bureaucracy and prevent the United States from going bankrupt.
“The goal is to try to get a trillion dollars out of the deficit,” Musk said, claiming that Trump “was handed a two-trillion deficit when he came to office.”
Musk said the average American taxpayer should be “mad as hell” over the way their tax dollars have been spent.
He said some of the people on his DOGE team, which has come under withering criticism from Democrats for taking what they say is illegal actions as it slashes programs, are federal employees. Others are software engineers who could be earning million-dollar salaries but have instead opted to work for him.
The president said Musk has only been implementing his executive orders, and vowed that traditional programs such as Social Security and the government-funded health insurance programs Medicare and Medicaid “won’t be touched” by the cuts.
However, the arrival of DOGE employees this week at the Social Security Administration prompted the abrupt resignation of its chief over an apparent clash with Musk's cost-cutting team. Other senior federal officials have resigned when confronted with DOGE’s scorched-earth approach to federal spending.
Trump also said that Musk has not asked him for any favors for his companies -- namely SpaceX, which holds multiple contracts with the U.S. government, and Tesla, which has benefited from U.S. subsidies to promote electric vehicles.
Musk said he would recuse himself if he’s ever confronted with a situation involving his businesses, and Trump said, “If there’s ever a conflict, he won’t be involved.”
Musk told Hannity he has paid a price for his support for Trump but intends to continue.
“I’m a technologist and I try to make technologies that help people and improve the world,” said Musk, who wore a sport coat over a T-shirt with the words Tech Support across the front.
Trump said he has always respected Musk, but his admiration for him grew when he opened the use of Starlink communications satellites to people in North Carolina whose communities had been devastated by a hurricane last year.
His admiration only grew when SpaceX was able to return a rocket to Earth and be grasped out of the air “like a beautiful little baby,” and he decided he wanted him on his team.
Will Russians Be Able To Buy Coca-Cola Again Thanks To The Taliban?
The Coca-Cola Company left Russia at the start of Russia’s 2022invasion of Ukraine, but now Russian Ambassador to Afghanistan Dmitry Zhirnov announced a range of trade agreements with the Taliban, and that includes Coca-Cola.
- By RFE/RL's Radio Azadi and
- Ray Furlong
Afghan Detained In Munich Attack Sparks Fears Among Rest Of Community
MUNICH, Germany -- Police in Munich arrested an Afghan asylum seeker after he rammed a car into a crowd in the German city, injuring 28 people and leaving many Afghans in the country on edge amid calls during an election campaign for tougher immigration laws.
Despite a heavy police presence in the city a day before many high-profile leaders such as U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attend the Munich Security Conference, the man, identified by German media as 24-year-old Farhad N., drove his vehicle into a demonstration held by trade unionists.
"The suspect will be brought before an investigating judge tomorrow [February 14]. We are still at the crime scene with our forensic team and specialists," Munich police said.
Police said they fired one shot at the vehicle, a Mini Cooper, and arrested the man at the scene where victims, clothes and even a stroller were strewn around the street.
Munich police said authorities have "indications of an extremist motive" and that prosecutors are investigating. Several news outlets, including Der Spiegel, cited sources as saying the man is thought to have posted Islamist content online before the attack.
"Afghans living in Germany are deeply saddened and worried about their future due to this and similar incidents," Rahmatullah Ziarmaal, an Afghan journalist who lives in the city of Limburg, told RFE/RL's Radio Azadi.
"Many Afghans feel particularly distressed by such events, fearing that anti-immigration parties will exploit them for political gain, making life even more difficult for refugees."
Joachim Herrmann, the interior minister for the state of Bavaria, said the suspect's application for asylum had been rejected, but he hadn't been deported because of security concerns in Afghanistan.
The incident is likely to enflame already heated rhetoric as Germans prepare to vote in parliamentary elections on February 23.
Germany has the largest Afghan community in Europe with an estimated 377,000 Afghan citizens residing in the country at the end of 2022, according to the country's statistics agency.
"We have to continue with deportations...even to Afghanistan, a very difficult country," Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told reporters in Munich.
Several violent incidents involving immigrants have bolstered far-right candidates, who narrowly trail center-right conservatives.
Both have been critical of Social Democrat Chancellor Olaf Scholz, accusing him of being soft on immigration, which they blame for an increase in violent crime rates.
Yousuf Rahimi, an Afghan resident of Munich who is awaiting approval of his asylum application, told RFE/RL that many Afghans come to the country because of the open immigration policies but fail to assimilate and end up getting involved in crime and drugs.
"People like this create difficulties for Afghans like me who genuinely seek asylum, want to contribute positively to German society, and hope to build a future here," he said.
With reporting by dpa and Reuters
Two Killed In Botched Suicide Bombing Attack On Taliban Ministry
A suicide bombing attack on the Taliban-led Ministry for Urban Development office in the Afghan capital, Kabul, has killed two people and injured three more.
Taliban authorities said the attacker was one of the people killed in the February 13 attack.
“The suicide bomber was identified and eliminated at the entrance of the ministry,” said Mohammad Kamal Afghan, a spokesman for the Taliban's Urban Development Ministry.
He told journalists that the attack happened just before noon local time.
No group has immediately accepted responsibility for the attack.
But the Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), an ultraradical rival of the Taliban, claimed credit for a separate attack earlier this week.
On February 11, at least eight people were killed in a suicide bank outside a bank in the northern city of Kunduz. IS-K said it targeted the Taliban government employees while they collected their salaries.
Earlier on December 11, an IS-K suicide bomber killed Khalil ur-Rahman Haqqani, the Taliban’s refugee minister. Five more people were killed in the attack inside the Refugee Ministry compound in Kabul.
Haqqani, in his 60s, was the most senior Taliban figure killed by IS-K since the Taliban seized power in August 2021.
IS-K has repeatedly targeted Afghanistan's Shi’ite minority and followers of the moderate Sufi orders.
In recent years, the group has embarked on terror attacks internationally. Last year, it claimed credit for attacks in Iran and Russia. Individuals linked to the group have also been detained in the United States and Europe.
On February 10, a meeting of the UN Security Council declared the group a significant threat to global security.
“We remain concerned about IS-K's capabilities to plot and conduct attacks as well as sustain recruitment campaigns, particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” said Dorothy Shea, the interim U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
The Taliban promised security after returning to power three years ago but has not been able to stamp out attacks by the IS-K. It launched a brutal crackdown against the IS-K and claimed to have killed or detained hundreds of its members.
Afghanistan’s tiny Salafist minority, however, has complained of being on the receiving end of the Taliban clampdown on IS-K as its members were unjustly persecuted.
In 2015, the IS-K emerged as the local branch of the Islamic State, which ruled vast swathes of territories in Syria and Iraq.
With reporting by RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi, VOA, Reuters, and AFP
Editor's Picks
Subscribe
Afghanistan/Pakistan Trending
Every Two Hours A Woman Dies During Childbirth In Afghanistan
2What's Behind The New Wave Of Violence In Pakistan's Balochistan?
3Hundreds Of Thousands Of Afghans In Pakistan Brace For Deportations
4Who Is Mahrang Baloch, The Rights Advocate Arrested By Pakistan On Terrorism Charges?
5Afghans No Longer Celebrate Nowruz Amid Poverty, Taliban Restrictions
6For Afghan Refugees In Pakistan, A 'Cruel' Countdown Has Begun
7American Woman Freed By Taliban, Second Release Of US Hostage In 8 Days
8Afghans 'In Extreme Despair' Amid Uncertainty Over Their US Migration
9Barred From Studying, Afghan Woman Uses Tech Skills To Keep Power Running
10Millions Of Afghan Girls Barred From School For Fourth Consecutive Year
RFE/RL has been declared an "undesirable organization" by the Russian government.
If you are in Russia or the Russia-controlled parts of Ukraine and hold a Russian passport or are a stateless person residing permanently in Russia or the Russia-controlled parts of Ukraine, please note that you could face fines or imprisonment for sharing, liking, commenting on, or saving our content, or for contacting us.
To find out more, click here.